A study of crack-tip plastic zone by elastoplastic finite element analysis

An elastoplastic finite element analysis has been carried out on a thin centre cracked panel using plane eight noded quadratic quadrilateral isoparametric elements with nonsingular displacement formulation. The linearised total strain method has been employed for the solution and the material data including those pertaining to postyield behaviour were used for the evaluation of the crack-tip stress field. The shape and size of the plastic zones at the crack tip corresponding to four stress levels have been obtained, which compare favourably with those obtained by other researchers.