On crack-microcrack interactions

✍ Scribed by Mark Kachanov

• Book ID: 104615483
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 368 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1573-2673
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00019712

✦ Synopsis

Microcracking in a process zone near macrocrack tips has been observed in many brittle materials.

Interaction with a microcrack array can significantly alter the stress concentration at the main crack tip. Depending on the geometry of the microcrack array, it can either increase the effective stress intensity factor, SIF (stress amplification) or decrease it (stress shielding, or "toughening by microcracking").

Several relatively simple crack-microcrack arraY configurations are analysed below; they demonstrate some essential features of the interactions (competition and relative strength of amplification and shielding effects, influence of geometry of the microcrack array, etc.).

Consideration is based on the method of analysis proposed recently [1,2] for the general case of elastic solids with many cracks.

Unlike the methodology in [1,2], the present work concerns the case when one crack is dominant, and the remaining cracks represent a damage zone.