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Abstract
Crack initiation has been observed when polystyrene cylinders were compressed across their diameters by narrow indentors. The cracks appeared at the tip of a yielded zone in which a pattern of interesting shear bands was seen. By combining a slip-line field analysis for the stress variation within the plastic zone with an elastic-boundary-value analysis for the surrounding material, the principal stresses at the yielded zone tip were evaluated. These stresses were found to be similar to other estimates of the stresses that cause crazing in polystyrene.