In recent years, the pre-notched or pre-cracked small punch test (P-SPT) has
been successfully used to estimate the fracture properties of metallic
materials for cases in which there is not sufficient material to identify these
properties from standard tests, such as CT or SENB specimens. The P-SPT
basically consists of deforming a pre-notched miniature specimen, whose edges
are firmly gripped by a die, using a high strength punch. The novelty of this
paper lies in the estimation of fracture properties using dog-bone-shaped
specimens with different confinement levels. With these specimens, three
confinement variations have been studied. The results obtained enable the
establishment of a variation of fracture properties depending on the level of
confinement of each miniature specimen and selection of the most appropriate
confinement for this goal