Failure Criteria of Materials

Content
1. Mechanical properties in a tension test
2. General form of failure criteria
3. Failure criteria
² Maximum normal stress fracture criterion
² Maximum shear stress yielding criterion (Tresca)
² Octahedral shear stress yielding criterion (von Mises)
4. Comparison between the yielding criteria
Reference:
Dowling, N.E. Mechanical Behavior of Materials: Engineering
Methods for Deformation, Fracture, and Fatigue, Prentice Hall, 4ª ed.
2012: Chapter 7.
1
 General form of failure criteria
• ¿What is the material resistance in tension tests?

2
 General form of failure criteria
• Kind of failure?
– yielding or fracture!

3
 General form of failure criteria
• Failure?
– yielding or fracture!
• In applying a yield criterion, the resistance of a
material is given by its yield strength: σ0

4
 General form of failure criteria
• Failure?
– yielding or fracture!
• In applying a yield criterion, the resistance of a
material is given by its yield strength: σ0

• To apply a fracture criterion, the ultimate strengths in

tension and compression, σut and σuc, are needed.

5
 General form of failure criteria
• Failure?
– yielding or fracture!
• In applying a yield criterion, the resistance of a
material is given by its yield strength: σ0

• To apply a fracture criterion, the ultimate strengths in

tension and compression, σut and σuc, are needed.

• In tension tests on materials that behave in a brittle

manner, yielding is in most cases not a well-defined
event, and the ultimate strength and fracture events
occur at the same point.
6
 General form of failure criteria
• Failure criteria for isotropic materials can be expressed
in the mathematical form:

7
 General form of failure criteria
• Failure criteria for isotropic materials can be expressed
in the mathematical form:

Where applying a σ1, σ2 and σ3 are the principal stresses

and σc the failure strength of the material: σ0 or σu

8
 General form of failure criteria
• Failure criteria for isotropic materials can be expressed
in the mathematical form:

Where applying a σ1, σ2 and σ3 are the principal stresses

and σc the failure strength of the material: σ0 or σu

• If any particular case of equation is plotted in principal

normal stress space (three-dimensional coordinates of
σ1, σ2 and σ3), the function f forms a surface that is
called the failure surface:

9
 General form of failure criteria
• Failure criteria for isotropic materials can be expressed
in the mathematical form:

Where applying a σ1, σ2 and σ3 are the principal stresses

and σc the failure strength of the material: σ0 or σu

• If any particular case of equation is plotted in principal

normal stress space (three-dimensional coordinates of
σ1, σ2 and σ3), the function f forms a surface that is
called the failure surface:
– yield surface or a fracture surface
10
 General form of failure criteria
• Consider a point in an engineering component where
the applied loads result in particular values of the
principal normal stresses, σ1, σ2 and σ3, and where a
specific function f has been chosen.

11
 General form of failure criteria
• Consider a point in an engineering component where
the applied loads result in particular values of the
principal normal stresses, σ1, σ2 and σ3, and where a
specific function f has been chosen.

• It is then useful to define an effective stress, which is a

single numerical value that characterizes the state of
applied stress:

12
 General form of failure criteria
• Consider a point in an engineering component where
the applied loads result in particular values of the
principal normal stresses, σ1, σ2 and σ3, and where a
specific function f has been chosen.

• It is then useful to define an effective stress, which is a

single numerical value that characterizes the state of
applied stress:

13
 General form of failure criteria
• Consider a point in an engineering component where
the applied loads result in particular values of the
principal normal stresses, σ1, σ2 and σ3, and where a
specific function f has been chosen.

• It is then useful to define an effective stress, which is a

single numerical value that characterizes the state of
applied stress:

• A safety factor against the failure:

14
 Failure criteria
• And what about the f function?

15
 Failure criteria
• And what about the f function?

• There are various specific failure criteria, some of which

are appropriate for yielding and others for fracture:

16
 Failure criteria
• And what about the f function?

• There are various specific failure criteria, some of which

are appropriate for yielding and others for fracture:

• Brittle materials:
– Maximum normal stress fracture criterion

17
 Failure criteria
• And what about the f function?

• There are various specific failure criteria, some of which

are appropriate for yielding and others for fracture:

• Brittle materials:
– Maximum normal stress fracture criterion

• Ductile materials:
– Maximum shear stress yielding criterion (Tresca)
– Octahedral shear stress yielding criterion (von Mises)
18
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Perhaps the simplest failure criterion is that failure is
expected when the largest principal normal stress
reaches the uniaxial strength of the material.

19
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Perhaps the simplest failure criterion is that failure is
expected when the largest principal normal stress
reaches the uniaxial strength of the material.

• This approach is reasonably successful in predicting

fracture of brittle materials under tension-dominated
loading.

20
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Perhaps the simplest failure criterion is that failure is
expected when the largest principal normal stress
reaches the uniaxial strength of the material.

• This approach is reasonably successful in predicting

fracture of brittle materials under tension-dominated
loading.

• Let us assume that we have a material which fractures if

an ultimate strength σu is exceeded in either tension or
compression:
21
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Failure criterion:

22
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Failure criterion:

• Why the absolute values?

23
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Failure criterion:

• Why the absolute values?

• The effective stress:

24
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Failure criterion:

• Why the absolute values?

• The effective stress:

25
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Failure criterion:

• Why the absolute values?

• The effective stress:

• The safety factor:

26
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Graphical representation:
– Plane-stress state

27
 Maximum normal stress fracture
criterion
• Graphical representation:
– Plane-stress state

28
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• Yielding of ductile materials is often predicted to occur
when the maximum shear stress on any plane reaches a
critical value τ0, which is a material property.

29
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• Yielding of ductile materials is often predicted to occur
when the maximum shear stress on any plane reaches a
critical value τ0, which is a material property.

30
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• Yielding of ductile materials is often predicted to occur
when the maximum shear stress on any plane reaches a
critical value τ0, which is a material property.

• For metals, such an approach is logical because the

mechanism of yielding on a microscopic size scale is the
slip of crystal planes, which is a shear deformation that is
expected to be controlled by a shear stress.

31
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• The principal shear stresses may be obtained from the
principal normal stresses in a plane-stress state:

32
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• The principal shear stresses may be obtained from the
principal normal stresses in a plane-stress state:

• This yield criterion can be stated as:

33
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• For a tensile test:

34
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• For a tensile test:

• This yield criterion can be stated as:

35
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• The effective stress:

• The safety factor:

36
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• The effective stress:

• The safety factor:

• The graphical representation for a plane-stress state?

37
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• The effective stress:

• The safety factor:

• The graphical representation for a plane-stress state?

• The region of no yielding, where σS < σ0, is thus the

region bounded by the lines:

38
 Maximum shear stress yielding
criterion (Tresca)
• The graphical representation for a plane-stress state?

39
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• Consider an oblique plane
oriented relative to the 1-2-3
principal axes:

40
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• Consider an oblique plane
oriented relative to the 1-2-3
principal axes:

• For the special case where α =

β = γ:

• the oblique plane intersects

the principal axes at equal
distances from the origin and
is called the octahedral plane.
41
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• If all the oblique planes are
drawn, they form octahedron:

42
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• Based on equilibrium of forces, the normal stress on this
plane can be shown to be the average of the principal
normal stresses:

43
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• Based on equilibrium of forces, the normal stress on this
plane can be shown to be the average of the principal
normal stresses:

• The quantity σh is called the octahedral normal stress or

the hydrostatic stress.

44
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• Based on equilibrium of forces, the normal stress on this
plane can be shown to be the average of the principal
normal stresses:

• The quantity σh is called the octahedral normal stress or

the hydrostatic stress.

• Equilibrium also permits the shear stress on the same

plane, called the octahedral shear stress:

45
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• Another yield criterion often used for ductile metals is the
prediction that yielding occurs when the shear stress on
the octahedral planes reaches the critical value:

46
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• Another yield criterion often used for ductile metals is the
prediction that yielding occurs when the shear stress on
the octahedral planes reaches the critical value:

• where τho is the value of octahedral shear stress τh

necessary to cause yielding.

47
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• Another yield criterion often used for ductile metals is the
prediction that yielding occurs when the shear stress on
the octahedral planes reaches the critical value:

• where τho is the value of octahedral shear stress τh

necessary to cause yielding.

• This criterion is used as a basis for predicting yielding and

other types of material behavior under complex states of
stress. 48
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• The failure criterion:

49
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• The failure criterion:

• It is useful to express the critical value in terms of the yield

strength σ0 from a tension test:

50
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• The failure criterion:

• It is useful to express the critical value in terms of the yield

strength σ0 from a tension test:

• Then:

51
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• The failure criterion:

• It is useful to express the critical value in terms of the yield

strength σ0 from a tension test:

• Then:

52
 Octahedral shear stress yielding
criterion (von Mises)
• The graphical representation for a plane-stress state:

53
 Comparison between the yielding
criteria
• The graphical representation for plane stress:

54
 Summary

• Failure criteria:
– Maximum normal stress fracture criterion

– Maximum shear stress yielding criterion (Tresca)

– Octahedral shear stress yielding criterion (von Mises)

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