4. Conclusion

Fracture mechanics provides values for toughness, intrinsic critical parameters which, once determined using tests on specimens, enable us to predict the behavior of a crack in a part under load. In linear elasticity, this transposition of results is rigorously exact. Knowing (figure 1 ) the location and dimensions of a defect in the part and the material toughness K _Ic enables us to calculate the critical load, by determining K _I and equating it to K _{I c} (or, knowing the load, to determine the size of the critical defect). However, this application...