A fracture study of slanted cracks using the stress dead‐zone hypothesis

This manuscript investigates the effect of existing slant cracks in finite plates subjected to the mode I loading condition using the stress dead‐zone (SDZ) concept. For this purpose, standardised polymeric middle tension (MT) specimens containing slant notches with different orientations were mechanically tested under a unidirectional tensile load. The experimental data were collected and analysed using 3D digital image correlation (DIC) contributing to document the deformation field around slanted cracks and stress intensity factor (SIF) evaluation. Computationally, the fracture model was solved using the finite element method (FEM) to obtain results on the SIF, deformation field and the SDZ characterisations. The obtained SIFs were compared with a reference solution from the literature. An acceptable agreement has been accomplished amongst the results. Furthermore, the SDZ was assessed through deformation field obtained from DIC and FEM.