Transferability of Cleavage Fracture Parameters Between Notched and Cracked Geometries

In the recent past, the local approach to fracture has shown its capacity to be a predictive tool in many complex cases of structural integrity assessment [1]. Brittle fracture of steels is one of the fields where local approach has brought a lot of understanding (e.g. effect of prestraining, effect of dynamic loading [2]). In the nuclear industry, local approach to fracture is often used as a complementary tool to the code (e.g. ASME) in order to reduce the empirical margins and to contribute to a better understanding of the physical mechanisms which can lead to fracture.