Damage Dependent Constitutive Behavior and Energy Release Rate for a Cohesive Zone in a Thermoviscoelastic Solid

In this paper a cohesive zone is introduced ahead of a crack tip in order to avoid the singularity at the crack tip. By applying thermodynamics to the cohesive zone and the surrounding body, a fracture criterion will be established so that the inelastic energy dissipation both in the cohesive zone and the surrounding bulk material can be distinguished from the energy released by fracture, and the propagation of crack can be predicted. In addition, the cohesive zone constitutive equation is constructed utilizing the Helmholtz free energy in the form of a single hereditary integral for a nonlinear viscoelastic material. The resulting constitutive model for the cohesive zone contains an internal state variable which represents the damage state within the cohesive zone. When the cohesive zone opening displacement is known, the energy release rate is thus history dependent, which is expressed in terms of the damage state, the length of separation in the cohesive zone and the geometric configuration of the cohesive zone opening displacement. Example results contained herein demonstrate this effect. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.