Dynamic stress intensity factors around three cracks in an infinite elastic plane subjected to time-harmonic stress waves

The time-harmonic problem for an infinite elastic plane weakened by three parallel cracks has been solved. In this problem, two cracks are situated symmetrically on either side of a central crack and incident stresses impinge perpendicular to the cracks. Using the Fourier transform technique, the boundary conditions are reduced to four simultaneous integral equations. To solve the equations, the differences of displacements inside the cracks are expanded in a series. The unknown coefficients in the series are solved by the Schmidt method. The dynamic stress intensity factors are calculated numerically for several crack configurations. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Thermal stress intensity factors of an infinite orthotropic layer with a crack

Stress intensity factors are determined for a crack in an infinite orthotropic layer. The crack is situated parallel to the plane surfaces of the layer. Stresses are solved for two kinds of the boundary conditions with respect to temperature field. In the first problem, the upper surface of the layer is heated to maintain a constant temperature T ₀, while the lower surface is cooled to maintain a constant temperature –T ₀. In the other problem, uniform heat flows perpendicular to the crack. The surfaces of the crack are assumed to be insulated. The boundary conditions are reduced to dual integral equations using the Fourier transform technique. To satisfy the boundary conditions outside the crack, the difference in temperature at the crack surfaces and differences in displacements are expanded in a series of functions that vanish outside the crack. The unknown coefficients in each series are evaluated using the Schmidt method. Stress intensity factors are then calculated numerically for a steel layer that behaves as an isotropic material and for a tyrannohex layer that behaves as an orthotropic material.     

Dynamic stress intensity factor due to concentrated loads on a propagating semi-infinite crack in orthotropic materials

The elastodynamic response of an infinite orthotropic material with a semi-infinite crack propagating at constant speed under the action of concentrated loads on the crack faces is examined. Solution for the stress intensity factor history around the crack tip is found for the loading modes I and II. Laplace and Fourier transforms along with the Wiener-Hopf technique are employed to solve the equations of motion. The asymptotic expression for the stress near the crack tip is analyzed which lead to a closed-form solution of the dynamic stress intensity factor. It is found that the stress intensity factor for the propagating crack is proportional to the stress intensity factor for a stationary crack by a factor similar to the universal function k(v) from the isotropic case. Results are presented for orthotropic materials as well as for the isotropic case.     

Dynamic stress intensity factor (Mode I) of a penny-shaped crack in an infinite poroelastic solid

This paper considers the transient stress intensity factor (Mode I) of a penny-shaped crack in an infinite poroelastic solid. The crack surfaces are impermeable. By virtue of the integral transform methods, the poroelastodynamic mixed boundary value problems is formulated as a set of dual integral equations, which, in turn, are reduced to a Fredholm integral equation of the second kind in the Laplace transform domain. Time domain solutions are obtained by inverting Laplace domain solutions using a numerical scheme. A parametric study is presented to illustrate the influence of poroelastic material parameters on the transient stress intensity. The results obtained reveal that the dynamic stress intensity factor of poroelastic medium is smaller than that of elastic medium and the poroelastic medium with a small value of the potential of diffusivity shows higher value of the dynamic stress intensity factor.     

Elastodynamic stress intensity factors for a semi-infinite crack due to three-dimensional concentrated shear loadings on the crack faces

The dynamic stress intensity factors for a semi-infinite crack in an otherwise unbounded elastic body is investigated. The crack is subjected to a pair of suddenly-applied shear point loads on its faces at a distance l away from the crack tip. This problem is treated as the superposition of two problems. The first problem considers the disturbance by a concentrated shear force acting on the surface of an elastic half space, while the second problem discusses a half space with its surface subjected to the negative of the tangential surface displacements induced by the first problem in the front of the crack edge. A fundamental problem is proposed and solved by means of integral transforms together with the application of the Wiener–Hopf technique and Cagniard–de Hoop method. Exact expressions are then derived for the mode II and III dynamic stress intensity factors by taking integration over the fundamental solution. Some features of the solutions are discussed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Theoretical and experimental determination of magnetic stress intensity factors of a crack in a double cantilever beam specimen

This paper presents the results of an experimental and theoretical investigation of the magnetic fracture behaviour of double cantilever beam (DCB) specimens. DCB tests were conducted on ferritic stainless steel SUS430 in the bore of a superconducting magnet at room temperature. A simple experimental technique using strain gauges was used to determine the stress intensity factor. The experiments show the predicted increase in the stress intensity factor with increasing magnetic field. The theoretical analysis is based on a beam‐plate theory for magnetoelastic interactions in a soft ferromagnetic material. Numerical calculations are carried out, and the stress intensity factor is obtained for several values of magnetic field. A comparison of the stress intensity factor is made between theory and experiment, and the agreement is good for the magnetic field considered.     

Variation of mixed modes stress intensity factors of an inclined semi-elliptical surface crack

In this paper, a singular integral equation method is applied to calculate the stress intensity factor along crack front of a 3D inclined semi-elliptical surface crack in a semi-infinite body under tension. The stress field induced by displacement discontinuities in a semi-infinite body is used as the fundamental solution. Then, the problem is formulated as a system of integral equations with singularities of the form r ^–3. In the numerical calculation, the unknown body force doublets are approximated by the product of fundamental density functions and polynomials. The results show that the present method yields smooth variations of mixed modes stress intensity factors along the crack front accurately for various geometrical conditions. The effects of inclination angle, elliptical shape, and Poisson's ratio are considered in the analysis. Crack mouth opening displacements are shown in figures to predict the crack depth and inclination angle. When the inclination angle is 60 degree, the mode I stress intensity factor F _I has negative value in the limited region near free surface. Therefore, the actual crack surface seems to contact each other near the surface.     

Dynamic stress intensity factors around two parallel cracks in a functionally graded layer bonded to dissimilar half-planes subjected to anti-plane incident harmonic stress waves

The time-harmonic problem of determining the stress field around two parallel cracks in functionally graded materials (FGMs) is studied. The Fourier transform technique is used to reduce the boundary conditions to four simultaneous integral equations which are then solved by expanding the differences of crack surface displacements in a series. The unknown coefficients in the series are obtained by the Schmidt method. Numerical calculations are carried out for dynamic stress intensity factors (DSIF) in FGMs.     

Fatigue crack propagation under cyclic thermal stress

Structures used at elevated temperature subject to severe cyclic thermal stress. Therefore, accurate prediction procedures for thermal fatigue crack growth should be applied to rationalise component flaw assessment. Fatigue crack propagation tests under thermal stress were carried out using an modified type 316 stainless steel (316FR), which is a candidate material for the fast reactor in Japan. Thermal stress of the tests was generated by cyclically changed temperature distribution through thickness in a plate by induction heating and air-cooling. Numerical analysis was also carried out to examine the applicability of the J integral under cyclic thermal stress. The J integral under elasto-plastic condition under thermal stress is close to the elastically calculated J integral. Prediction by J integral tends to be conservative for deeper cracks, and modification of the J integral value using crack opening ratio gives good agreement with the experimental crack growth.     

3D J‐integral evaluation using the computation of line and surface integrals

In the analysis of fracture mechanics of structures using three‐dimensional (3D) J‐integral, an integral evaluation of line and surface is required. However, because surface integral evaluation requires the calculation of the second derivative of displacement field and commercial finite element codes cannot calculate it, then this portion of the integral is neglected in some research. In this paper, a method for computing 3D J‐integral is presented using finite element analysis. In the analysis, the second derivative evaluation of displacement field is employed. The method is implemented in calculating the J‐integral of some 3D cracks and results are compared to well‐known reference values. The results show that the method is reliable and is suitable for applications in engineering. The portion of 3D J‐integral, namely the surface integral value is investigated and it is shown that neglecting this portion can introduce considerable error in the final results.     

Crack tip stress intensity factors for a crack emanating from a sharp notch

Accurate calibrations are provided for the crack tip stress intensity factor for a crack of finite length emanating from the symmetric tip of a sharp notch, of arbitrary angle, in terms of the generalised stress intensity quantifying remote loading of the notch. The solution is applied to example problems and shown to be accurate for cases where the crack is much shorter then the notch depth.     

Determination of thermal stress intensity factors for an interface crack in a graded orthotropic coating-substrate structure

The thermal fracture problem of an interface crack between a graded orthotropic coating and the homogeneous substrate is investigated by two different approaches. For the case that most of the material properties in the graded orthotropic coating are assumed to vary as an exponential function, the integral transform and singular integral equation technique is used to obtain some analytical results. In order to analyze the case with more complex material distribution, an interaction integral is presented to evaluate the thermal stress intensity factors of cracked functionally graded materials (FGMs), and then the element-free Galerkin method (EFGM) is developed to obtain the final numerical results. The good agreement is obtained between the numerical results and the analytical ones. In addition, the influence of material gradient parameters and material distribution on the thermal fracture behavior is also presented.     

Stress intensity factor analysis for an interface crack between dissimilar isotropic materials under thermal stress

Thermal stresses, one of the main causes of interfacial failure between dissimilar materials, arise from different coefficients of linear thermal expansion. Two efficient numerical procedures in conjunction with the finite element method (FEM) for the stress intensity factor (SIF) analysis of interface cracks under thermal stresses are presented. The virtual crack extension method and the crack closure integral method are modified using the superposition method. The SIF analyses of some interface crack problems under mechanical and thermal loads are demonstrated. Very accurate mode separated SIFs are obtained using these methods.     

Dynamic stress intensity factors around a rectangular crack in an infinite plate under impact load

A three-dimensional solution is presented for the transient response of an infinite plate which contains a rectangular crack. The Laplace and Fourier transforms are used to reduce the problem to a pair of dual integral equations. These equations are solved with the series expansion method. The stress intensity factors are defined in the Laplace transform domain, and they are inverted numerically in the physical space.     

Experimental and finite element analyses on stress intensity factors of an elliptical surface crack in a circular shaft under tension and bending

Experimental backtracking technique and finite element analysis have been employed to evaluate the stress intensities along the front of an elliptical surface crack in a cylindrical rod. The finite element solution covers a wide range of crack shapes loaded under end-free and end-constrained axial tension and pure bending. Convenient closed form stress intensity expressions along the whole crack front for each of the loading cases have been given in terms of the crack aspect ratio, crack depth ratio and place ratio.The closed form solutions have been compared against a number of representative solutions collected from the literature. It has been found that different finite element results for the interior points are generally in good mutual agreement, while solutions derived from other methods may sometimes indicate different trends. At the surface interception point agreement is less good because of a complication in the interpretation of stress intensity there.Experimental backtracking results on the end-constrained axial tension case corroborate well with the closed form solution presented. It suggests that the current closed form solution is adequate in describing the stress intensities along the whole crack front of real surface cracks in cylindrical rods.     

Stress intensity factors for cracked triangular cross‐section thin‐walled tubes

For one kind of finite‐boundary crack problems, the cracked equilateral triangular cross‐section tube, an analytical and very simple method to determine the stress intensity factors has been proposed based on a new concept of crack surface widening energy release rate and the principle of virtual work. Different from the classical crack extension energy release rate, the crack surface widening energy release rate can be defined by the G*‐integral theory and expressed by stress intensity factors. This energy release rate can also be defined easily by the elementary strength theory for slender structures and expressed by axial strains and loads. These two forms of crack surface widening energy release rate constitute the basis of a new analysis method for cracked tubes. From present discussions, a series of stress intensity factors are derived for cracked equilateral triangular cross‐section tubes. Actually, the present method can also be applied to cracked polygonal tubes.     

Scattering of the harmonic anti-plane shear waves by a crack in functionally graded piezoelectric materials

In the present paper, the dynamic behavior of a Griffth crack in the functionally graded piezoelectric material (FGPM) is investigated. It is assumed that the elastic stiffness, piezoelectric constant, dielectric permittivity and mass density of the FGPM vary continuously as an exponential function, and that FGPM is under the anti-plane mechanical loading and in-plane electrical loading. By using the Fourier transform and defining the jumps of displacement and electric potential components across the crack surface as the unknown functions, two pairs of dual integral equations are derived. To solve the dual integral equations, the jumps of the displacement and electric potential components across the crack surface are expanded in a series of Jacobi polynomial. Numerical examples are provided to show the effects of material properties on the stress and the electric displacement intensity factors.     

Investigation of the scattering of harmonic elastic antiplane shear waves by a finite crack using the non-local theory

In this paper, the scattering of harmonic antiplane shear waves by a finite crack is studied using the non-local theory. The Fourier transform is applied and a mixed boundary value problem is formulated. Then a set of dual integral equations is solved using the Schmidt method instead of the first or the second integral equation method. Contrary to the classical elasticity solution, it is found that no stress singularity is presented at the crack tip. The non- local dynamic elastic solutions yield a finite hoop stress at the crack tip, thus allowing for a fracture criterion based on the maximum dynamic stress hypothesis. The finite hoop stress at the crack tip depends on the crack length. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

T‐stress corrected notch stress intensity factors with application to welded lap joints

The definition, content and application of the notch stress intensity factors (NSIFs) characterizing the stress field at rounded slit tips (keyholes) is discussed. The same is done in respect of the T‐stress transferred from the corresponding pointed slit tips. A T‐stress based correction of the NSIF K_1,ρ is found to be necessary. The applicability of the T‐stress term supplemented by higher‐order terms in Williams’ solution to the slit tip stresses in tensile‐shear loaded lap joints is discussed in more detail. The role of the T‐stress in constituting the near‐field stresses of rounded slit tips is shown to cause a difference between internal and external slit tip notches. The notch stress equations for lap joints proposed by Radaj based on structural stress and by Lazzarin based on a finite element model of the rounded notch are reconsidered and amended based on the derivations above.