A fracture criterion based on the strain energy density (SED) over a control volume, which embraces the notch edge, is employed in the present paper to assess the fracture loads of some U-notched Brazilian disk (UNBD) specimens. The specimens are made of commercial graphite and have been tested under pure mode I, pure mode II and mixed mode I/II loading. The results show that the SED criterion allows to successfully assess the fracture loads of graphite specimens for different notch tip radii and various mode mixity conditions with discrepancies that fall inside the scatter band of ${pm}20%$.