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The results of an extensive experimental investigation on a cracked shaftspecimen have shown two different aspects which are generally disregarded in crackedshaft analyses: a consistent crack closure effect, which affects the well known crackbreathing behaviour, and, in conditions where the crack should be completely closed bycompressive stresses on the crack faces, high stress intensity factors in positions closeto the crack lips, showing that the contact occurs only in small areas close to the lips.Both effects can be simulated in simple ways by linear models.