Notched Marble Specimens Under Direct Tension: the Influence of the Shape of the Notch

In this paper the influence of the shape of the notch on the intensity of the strain field developed in marble plates subjected to direct tension was studied both experimentally and numerically. The specimens were made from Dio- nysos marble, the material used for the restoration project of the Parthenon Temple of Athens. The experimental results from specimens with different notch shape were compared to each other and, also, with the respective values obtained from a numerical analysis. The material was modeled as linear elastic either isotropic or transversely isotropic. The comparison between experiment- al and numerical results is satisfactory concerning the specimens with the semi-circular notches. Deviations are observed for the U-shaped notch, which may be attributed to the magnitude of the process zone developed, that renders the elasticity hypothesis, adopted in the numerical analysis, invalid. Key words: natural building stones; Dionysos marble; uniaxial tension; double edge notched specimens; finite element method.