Characterizing the fracture toughness of soda‐lime glass by controlling the Vickers indentation crack propagation

Abstract Glass, which finds wide applications in various fields, is inherently brittle and thus prone to occasional failures. Fracture toughness, characterizing the crack growth resistance of materials, is a critical parameter in material selection and structural design. In this study, we introduce a modified Vickers indentation technique grounded on the linear superposition principle of stress intensity factor that could quickly and accurately characterize the fracture toughness of soda‐lime glass. A uniaxial compressive prestress was imparted in the horizontal direction. This effectively constrained the crack propagation half‐length in the vertical direction of the specimen. As underwent variation, changed correspondingly, thereby facilitating the quantification of the relationship between the compressive prestress and the crack propagation half‐length. The experimental results demonstrate that the fracture toughness values determined by our proposed method are remarkably close to those obtained via the single‐edge V‐notched beam technique. In comparison with Anstis’ formula, our method reduces the error to nearly one‐fourth, all the while preserving the simplicity intrinsic to the indentation technique.