## 1 Introduction
The transformation of a ductile material into a virtual brittle material is key-feature of the EMC because it allows using linear-elastic mechanics for ductile materials. However, the EMC must be incorporated with a notch failure criterion to predict the load carrying capacity for an arbitrary notched component. [PERSON] [30] used the EMC with the mean stress (MS) criterion and the theory of critical distance (TCD) [24] to estimate the fracture load for V-notched specimen subjected to three-point bending and double V-notched specimens subjected to uniaxial tensile loading. Both specimens were machined from cold-rolled low-carbon steel. The results obtained by the EMC-MS and EMC-TCD are in excellent agreement with the experimental results. Later, [PERSON] [31] and [PERSON] et al. [32] showed that the equivalent material concept can be used to predict failure of U-notched metallic specimens exhibiting moderate and large scale yielding. In addition, the EMC was successfully used with the strain energy density criterion proposed by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [23] to analyzed mode I fracture of 7075-T6 and 6061-T6 aluminum alloys. Investigations of tensile fracture of polymeric notched specimens were performed for mode I and mixed mode I/II loading. [PERSON] et al. [33] proposed a procedure to evaluate the critical load of U-notched PMMA specimens based on cohesive zone-crack concept. The results obtained by [PERSON] et al., were in excellent agreement with the experimental results. However, PMMA is known to exhibit brittle fracture at room temperature. Tensile fracture analysis of U-notched specimens machined from Araldite LY 5052 epoxy resin was performed by [PERSON] et al. [34]. The elongation at the ultimate strength of this material is 12.2%. To use the EMC, the authors modified the original formulation of the total strain energy density [34] to capture the plastic behavior of Araldite. The exponential relation between the stress and plastic strain proposed by [PERSON] [35] instead of the power-type relation is usually suitable for metallic materials. The authors combined the EMC with both the mean stress (MS) and the maximum tangential stress (MTS) [36] criteria to estimate the fracture load with discrepancies range of 2.7% to 8.1% between theoretical and experimental results. Later, [PERSON] et al. [37] investigated the mixed mode I/II fracture of the same material examined by [PERSON] et al. [34]. Again, using the EMC with both the MS and the MTS criteria the authors were able to achieve an estimate of the fracture loads for U-notches with different inclination angle and radii within 2.7% to 7.5% of that obtained from the experiment. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [38] performed experiments on additively manufactured straight and angled central U-notched specimens using PC and Nylon filaments. The authors successfully used the EMC and the J-integral criterion to estimate the load-carrying capacity of specimens. Proposing structural elements and protective layers to be made of polycarbonate calls for investigating their fracture performance, since these structural components will be subjected to repeated actuating forces of the solar panel steering servos and could be exposed steady and gusting wind loads. Establishing solar farms in remote desert areas could make the solar surfaces laid open to blowing dust particles. In this paper, we apply the equivalent material concept (EMC) in conjunction with the strain energy density (SED) to evaluate the Mode I fracture load for U-notched polycarbonate representative samples. Thus, polycarbonate sheets are machined into rectangular samples with different U notches with different depths and radii. The samples are then loaded with tension until complete fracture. While performing the tensile tests, the samples are analyzed using digital image correlation system to capture the strain field around the notches. A parallel numerical investigation is performed using a finite element code written in ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL) to evaluate the strain energy density of the samples.