Failure Stress in Notched Paper Sheets

In this work the crack initiation stress of notched specimens of filter paper is studied. The paper in the microstructure has a random array in their fibers while macroscopically it behaves anisotropically. The self-affine crack mechanics is used to study the size effect in the tensile behavior of this kind of paper under the presence of several conditions of geometrical notches. While in the traditional fracture mechanics the crack initiation stress is a material parameter when is reached a critical level at the crack tip, in the self-affine crack mechanics, depends moreover of the resulting tortuosity of the crack. Four geometrical arrangements in two sizes we considered: centered circular notch, centered lineal notch, sided circular notches and without notch at 10 and 300 mm width with a relation 2a/w = 0.25 under the same loading conditions. In this, the without notch specimens present the higher stress, all other notched specimens presented a similar crack initiation stress about 1 % of difference among them, and the crack growth is not affected by the geometry of notch. In spite of this difference, no one of the specimens reach the theoretical stress concentration of 3 such as predicted the classical stress theory.