STATISTICS OF BRITTLE FAILURE IN MULTIAXIAL STRESS STATES

Two methods for relating failure statistics for different stress state s in brittle materials are compared. Despite the fact that the two met hods are based on the same fundamental assumptions on crack distributi ons, they give apparently very different formulations. In this paper i t is shown that the two methods are equivalent, and the apparent ambig uity resulting from having two seemingly different results from the sa me set of basic assumptions is removed.