Statistical Aspects of Fracture Problems

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the development of statistical theories of strength. A main aim of these theories is to explain in a reasonable way such things as the dependence of the strength of specimens on their volume or length. In this paper it is pointed out that the problems posed by these models are equivalent to an important problem in mathematical statistics, namely, the distribution of the smallest value in samples of size n drawn from a population having some probability density function f(x). The calculations made by mathematical statisticians give a far more complete description of the results to be expected than do the estimates to be found up to now in the technical literature.