Issue 8

K. G. Kodancha et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 8 (2009) 45-51; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.08.04 47 crack advance; σ ij , ε ij and u i are the stress, strain and displacement components of the 3D crack problem under consideration;  , L ij  L ij and L i u are the corresponding components in the line-load auxiliary solution given by Eqns. (1) and (2). Nakamura and Parks [18] have shown that the crack-tip T-stress is related to the integral, I ( s ) as given below:                    33 2 ( ) ( ) ( ) 1 E I s T s s f (4) where ε 33 ( s ) is the extensional strain at point s in the direction tangential to the crack front. The computation of the domain integral, Eqn. (3), is readily compatible with finite element formulations. In this analysis, T-stress is computed from Eqn. (4) based on the domain integral I ( s ) (Refer Eqn. (3)) using five contours. In this Finite element analysis it is observed that last four contours give almost path independent values of I ( s ). Hence, in this study, the average value of T-stresses is obtained using the results from the outer four contours. Figure1 : Geometry of the specimen considered in the analysis. Figure 2 : A typical Finite element used at crack-front.