Development of Glass/Steel Bibeam Specimen for Study of Brittle Crack Path Stability

We have developed a novel specimen for studying crack paths in glass. Under certain conditions, the specimen reaches a state where the crack must select between multiple paths satisfying the K II = 0 condition. This path selection is a simple but difficult benchmark case for both analytical and numerical methods of predicting crack propagation. We document the development of the specimen, using an uncracked and instrumented test case to study the effect of adhesive choice and validate the accuracy of both a simple beam theory model and a finite element model. In addition, we present preliminary fracture test results and provide a comparison to the path predicted by two numerical methods (mesh restructuring and XFEM).