Evaluation of statistical fracture toughness parameters on the basis of crack arrest experiment

The crack diffusion theory addresses the origins of the observed scatter, in brittle fracture, of macroscopic fracture parameters under seemingly identical test conditions. An essential question of experimental evaluation of the nonconventional fracture parameters introduced there appears to be buried in the formalism. In this paper we report a pilot crack arrest experiment, in which a methodology of evaluating some of the new fracture parameters is demonstrated. Experimental observations are found to not disprove the theory.