The stress intensity factor (K) is used in the field of fracture mechanics. It predicts the stress intensity near the crack tip induced by remote loads or residual stresses.
The size of K depends on:
Example Geometry
Size and location of cracks
load size
load distribution
The stress intensity factor is a single-parameter characterization of the stress field at the crack tip.
The following equation describes the stress intensity:
where ß describes the relationship between the total geometrical characteristics and the stress intensity factor. ß can be a function of crack length as well as other geometric features. K represents the nominal stress away from the crack.
The above equations show that the strength of the stress field (and thus the stress in the region of the crack tip) is linearly proportional to the remotely applied stress and proportional to the square root of half the crack length.
Stress intensity can be determined by:
Finite Element Analysis
ASTM E1681 standard method
weight function method
