Scaling of Charpy Fracture Energy with Specimen Size

The fracture energy of edge-cracked beams under bending is stronglydependent on the specimen size. Therefore the Charpy fracture energy can only bemeasured on standardized specimen. In this paper a relation between the fracture energyand specimen size is derived analytically, which can be used to scale-up the fracture energyof sub-sized tests. Unlike the common empirical relations, the presented scaling law isapplicable to any elastic-plastic material. The results are compared with experimental dataobtained from different specimen sizes.