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The crack tip opening angle (CTOA) is seeing increased use to characterize fracture in so-called "low constraint" geometries, such as thin sheet aerospace structures and thin-walled pipes. With this increase in application comes a need to more fully understand and measure actual CTOA behavior. CTOA is a measure of the material response during ductile fracture, a "crack tip response function." In some range of crack extension following growth initiation, a constant value of CTOA is often assumed. However, many questions concerning the use of CTOA as a material response-characterizing parameter remain. For example, when is CTOA truly constant? What three-dimensional effects may be involved (even in thin sheet material)? What are the effects of crack tunneling on general CTOA behavior? How do laboratory specimen measurements of CTOA compare to actual structural behavior?Measurements of CTOA on the outer surface of test specimens reveal little about threedimensional effects in the specimen interior, and the actual measurements themselves are frequently difficult. The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) use their microtopography system to collect data from the actual fracture surfaces following a test. Analyses of these data provide full three-dimensional CTOA distributions, at any amount of crack extension. The analysis is accomplished using only a single specimen and is performed entirely after the completion of a test. The resultant CTOA distributions allow development of full and effective understanding of CTOA behaviors. This paper presents underlying principles, various sources of measurement error and their corrections, and experimental and analytical verification of CTOA analysis with the microtopography method.

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The initial stage of the stable tearing process in two 2.3 mm sheet 2024-T3 aluminum alloy M(T) specimens are analyzed using fracture surface microtopography reconstruction techniques. The local crack tip opening angles (CTOA) in the interior of the specimens are determined relative to both crack extension and through-thickness position. The microtopographic analysis of cracks grown in the L-T and T-L orientations reveal that interior CTOA is comparable to those measured on the surface using standard optical analysis methods. Similar to surface CTOA results, interior (mid-thickness) CTOA exhibit a transient behavior; CTOA transitions from high angles, at near crack initiation, to a lower steady-state value of 5 deg. and 4.2 deg. for L-T and T-L, respectively, at crack lengths greater than 1.5 mm Fracture surface topographic projection maps are used to study the evolution of crack front tunneling during the initial stage of the fracture process. Stable tearing initiates at mid-thickness followed by a crack front tunneling process to a depth of approximately 2 mm. A brief discussion of the basis of the fracture process reconstruction method is provided and comments on the general utility of microtopographic fracture surface examination for general assessment of elastic-plastic and fully-plastic fracture processes are made.

Detailed three-dimensional nonlinear finite element (FE) analyses and experimental moire studies are performed on a plate containing a moderately deep part-through surface crack to establish limits of HRR-dominance. The plate is subjected to predominantly far-field tensile loading. The material under investigation is ASTM A710 steel, which was constitutively modeled by large deformation J2 flow theory of plasticity. The FE mesh was carefully constructed to resolve both crack front fields (such as J-integral and CTOD) and global fields (such as surface displacements, strains). By comparing the J-integral and CTOD results with an earlier HRR-dominance study using (small strain) deformation theory of plasticity, we found little effect of the different formulations on the crack front fields. The global deformation fields from the numerical simulation are in good agreement with our experimental results. The eventual loss of HRR-dominance is intimately related to the interaction of the global plastic flow fields with those of the crack front.