Combination of Wedge Splitting and Bending Fracture Test-Crack Tip Stress Field and Nonlinear Zone Extent Analysis

The paper is focused on a numerical study of fracture test of quasi-brittle materials which is a combination of both the wedge splitting and the three-point bending configuration. Changes in some parameters of the test geometry lead to variations in constraint conditions at the crack tip, which affects the extent of the fracture process zone, i.e. the volume where the crucial processes, determining the possibility and extent of the failure take place. Differences indicated by the failure extents (expressed as the crack pattern) and stress distributions are plotted for several stages of loading for the proposed fracture test configurations.