Crack Tunneling: Effect of Stress Constraint

* Corresponding author; Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT Crack tunneling is a crack growth feature often seen in stable tearing crack growth tests on specimens made of ductile materials and containing through-thickness cracks with initially straight crack fronts. As a specimen is loaded monotonically, the mid-section of the crack front will advance first, which will be followed by crack growth along the rest of the crack front, leading to the formation of a thumb-nail shaped crack-front profile. From the viewpoint of fracture mechanics, crack tunneling will occur if the operating fracture criterion is met first in the mid-section of the crack front, which may be due to a higher fracture driving force and/or a lower fracture toughness in the mid-section. A proper understanding of this fracture behavior is important to the development of a threedimensional fracture criterion for general stable tearing crack growth in ductile materials.