Investigation of the notch sensitivity of a short fibre reinforced C/SiC

The notch sensitivity of a short fiber-reinforced C/SiC material was studied by tensile tests with prismatic and different symmetrically notched specimens having identical effective cross section. Within the scatter of the strength values no notch sensitivity of these materials was found. However, an increase of the scatter of strength data was observed when notches were introduced. The lack of no tch sensitivity is attributed to a combination of large pre-existing cracks and effective stress restribution by inelastic mechanisms.