Stress intensity factor determination along a kinked crack path by DIC analyses

Sharp kinks may be observed under shear loading or in materials containing weak directions, such as those produced by additive manufacturing. A better understanding of the fracture of these materials, both theoretically and experimentally, is required to deploy them in structural applications. This study focuses on the measurement of stress intensity factors (SIFs) around a sharp kink using digital image correlation (DIC). The performances of two DIC-based techniques, namely, integrated-DIC and post-processing of DIC-measured displacement fields, are assessed on a benchmark test using fused deposit modeling capabilities, and are compared to a reference finite element solution. It is shown that Williams' expansion remains valid on a large enough region around the crack to extract reliable SIFs even very close to the crack kink. Both techniques are very trustworthy, provided the SIF identification zone is carefully defined to exclude the kink zone of influence.