Cracks and notches: analogies and differences of the relevant stress distributions and practical consequences in fatigue limit predictions

The point and the area methods due to Taylor and valid both for cracks and for notches are discussed. The aim is to highlight that in some circumstances the analogies of the relevant stress fields are so strong as to make them indistinguishable; at the same time, there exist other circumstances of interest in which the correlation has to be found between notch and sharp re-entrant corner. This fact has practical consequences on the size effect when the notch tip radius is small.