A criterion based on the local strain energy density for the fracture assessment of cracked and V-notched components made of incompressible hyperelastic materials

The present contribution is devoted to the theoretical and numerical study of the elasto-static fields at a vertex notch under mode I loading. The analysis is based on the plane deformation hyperelasticity theory for an incompressible Mooney-Rivlin material. While for cracked components some contributions can be found in the recent and past literature, studies on V-notched components are instead very limited. The aim of this paper is to partially fill this lack, providing a fracture criterion for the assessment of components weakened by sharp V-notches. In the first part of the paper, a brief description of the analytical frame available for V-notches in hyperelastic material is reported. A Williams' type diagram reporting the degree of singularity for a material obeying a Mooney-Rivlin behavior is present. The asymptotic stress field and the local strain energy density are investigated by means of non-linear finite element analyses. In the second part of the paper, a criterion based on the local energy is proposed and successfully applied to a set of experimental data taken from the literature. Future works are surely necessary to validate the criterion considering more sets of data from sharp and blunt V-notches.