Does notch sensibility exist in environmentally assisted cracking (EAC)?

Empirical notch sensitivity factors q have been used for a long time to account for notch effects in fatigue design. This old concept has been recently modeled using sound mechanical principles to properly quantify the influence of the stress gradient around the notch tip on the fatigue behavior of mechanically short cracks. This model can be used to calculate q values from the basic fatigue resistances of the material, its fatigue limit and its crack propagation threshold, considering all the characteristics of the notch geometry and of the loading. This model predictions have been validated by proper tests, and based on this experimental evidence a criterion to accept tolerable short cracks has been proposed. In this work the mechanical principles that support this criterion are extended to account for notch effects in environmentally assisted cracking problems.