A Computational Study of Effect of Thickness on Mild Steel Fracture

Abstract Fracture and crack propagation in various materials have always attracted the attention of researchers. Therefore, an investigation of the fracture of construction steel as one of the most extensively used materials in the industry is of necessity. Numerical modeling has been always a complementary aid to the laboratory sample analysis. One important issue is to study the behavior of laboratory specimens based on their dimensions, which finds further significance in fracture problems. In the current research, the effect of sample thickness on the crack behavior is investigated via a compact tension specimen. Accordingly, using numerical result validation, the behavior of the numerical samples along the thickness is examined and used as a complement to the experimental results. By modeling and analyzing numerical samples with different thicknesses (0.1 < B/W < 2), an equation is proposed. The equation can be used to determine in what percentage of the thickness from the free edge the behavior is either plane stress or plane strain.