Low-cost J-R curve estimation based on CVN upper shelf energy

J‐R curve testing is costly and difficult. The results may also sometimes be unreliable. For less demanding structures, J‐R curve testing is therefore not practical. The only way to introduce tearing instability analysis for such cases is to estimate the J‐R curves indirectly from some simpler test. The Charpy‐V notch test provides information about the energy needed to fracture a small specimen in half. On the upper shelf this energy relates to ductile fracture resistance and it is possible to correlate it to the J‐R curve. Here, 112 multispecimen J‐R curves from a wide variety of materials were analysed and a simple power‐law‐based description of the J‐R curves was correlated to the CVNUS energy. This new correlation corresponds essentially to a 5% lower bound and conforms well with the earlier correlations, regardless of the definition of the ductile fracture toughness parameter.