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It is known that the presence of tensile residual stress in a cracked structure can result
in the load carrying capacity of the structure being much lower than that of an
identical structure with no residual stress. Various researchers [1, 2, 3] have carried
out tests to assess the influence of residual stress on the fracture of cracked components.
Others [4, 5] have considered the problem of how to treat residual stresses in
the fracture assessment of these components.
However, in engineering practice, a component is combined with other components
to form a structure. This raises the possibility of long-range residual stresses being
introduced in the structure as a result of misfits between components. In order to
assess how the strength of a structure containing a cracked component is influenced
by these long-range residual stresses, a whole-structure level approach (rather than
a component-level approach) is required.