Not my area of expertise - I did two semesters of solid mechanics as part of my engineering degree 10 years ago. All I really remember is hoop stress and Kic T

Not my area of expertise - I did two semesters of solid mechanics as part of my engineering degree 10 years ago. All I really remember is hoop stress and Kic The wikipedia article on Fracture mechanics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture_mechanics) seems to be pretty good - explains some of the mathematics involved - which is a start towards modelling it. See section on predicting crack paths. You'd also need to know how the structural member was loaded and it's geometry - software like ANSYS is used for modelling this.