Talk:Size effect on structural strength

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Dear Editor: This definitely is not a research paper. It is a summary of extensive literature combining books and hundreds of research articles on this topic, which became very important during the last 20 years. Nevertheless, if you propose a specific change, I would consider it carefully. Zdenek P. Bazant

Missing references

The page misses references. The section "Statistical Theory of Size Effect in Brittle Structures" has only a reference to someone Mariotte 1684 and Weibull's papers. But Weibull never talks about $N_{\rm eq}$ or the experimental determination of $m$. "Energetic Size Effect" has similar problems, the sentence "The existence of a finite D_{0} is a salient feature of the energetic size effect, discovered in 1984" shows how badly the references are missing. And if there are references, they are not linked to the section references.

Next, the section when the author talks about $N_{\rm eq}$ is unclear: "The RVE is here defined as the smallest material volume whose failure suffices to make the whole structure fail. From experience, the structure is sufficiently larger than one RVE if the equivalent number N_((eq)) of RVEs in the structure is larger than about 10^{4}." This suggest the following idea: the more representative volume elements, the more elements the stress will be redistributed across and consequently the lower probability of complete failure and thus a contradiction to what the author claims. This section needs both more careful explanation and citation of source.

Lastly, Weibull "theory" is not a real theory, it is just an approach that works in special cases and the absolute must for it to hold is the weakest link assumption. However, the bigger the extrapolation the less likely this assumption is to hold. The page should also present the critique of the approach. --Leosenko (talk) 21:56, 14 December 2017 (UTC)