The stress and displacement fields at the tip of crazes in glassy polymers

This analysis models a craze region in glassy polymers as an elastic transversely isotropic homogeneous inclusion of thin elliptical shape with different elastic properties from the bulk polymer. The plane elasticity problem for an applied uniform stress field is solved and the results dimensionalized with respect to the craze tip radius. Stress and strain enhancements of several times far field values are found to occur at the craze tip and are independent of craze tip radius. These results are consistent with experimentally observed characteristics of craze growth and should be important in assessing the relative merits of different criteria that have been proposed for craze growth in glassy polymers.