Author(s)

W.S. Blackburn & W.S. Hall

Abstract

Portela and Aliabadi have recently made available a book and software for the application of crack growth in linear elastic materials in two dimensions. The stress intensity factors are evaluated by contour integrals around the tip. This has been generalised to allow for quartic shape functions, curved cracks and growth of cracks by different amount at different crack tips. Examples will be given of initially straight cracks under uniform and mixed mode loading. 1 Introduction Portela, Aliabadi and Rooke* have presented a method for analysing cracks in a two dimensional linear elastic material by using discontinuous quadratic boundary elements. On one face of the crack, they formulated the equations for the displacements, and on the other face those for the tractions.

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