Mode I Stress Intensity Factor and T-Stress Solutions for Centre Cracked Orthotropic Plates

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is the formulation of analytical expressions for the direct calculation of fracture parameters for the case of an orthotropic material with elastic behaviour. Numerical simulation by finite element method is performed to evaluate the singular and non-singular terms of William's series. Based on the obtained results, a fitting procedure is performed to propose an analytical formulation involving the geometric parameters of the plate and the crack in the approximate estimation of these parameters. The importance of the proposed analytical expressions is that they do not require a complex and time-consuming numerical analysis for the computation of the stress intensity factors and T-stresses for such an orthotropic cracked panel. A comparative study between the results obtained by the proposed equations and those obtained by finite element procedure has shown a good correlation.