Fracture trajectories in a biaxially stressed plate
Abstract
A SPECIALLY designed rig has been used to examine the phenomena of crack growth in centrallynotched plates of polymethyl methacrylate under biaxial stress. Attention has been directed particularly towards investigating the phenomenon of path instability, viz. the deviation of a crack from its expected path with increasing transverse stress. Cracks grown under a biaxial stress system, whose transverse component, acting parallel to the crack, exceeds the normal component, do so in an S-shaped curve centred on the original, straight notch. Stress intensity factors for such a crack are estimated by superposition of related known solutions. On the assumption that crack extension takes place with opening displacements only at the tip, that is, the crack tip stress field remains symmetrical, the observed dependence of path geometry on the degree of stress biaxiality is explained.
- Publication:
-
Journal of Mechanics Physics of Solids
- Pub Date:
- December 1976
- DOI:
- 10.1016/0022-5096(76)90010-7
- Bibcode:
- 1976JMPSo..24..381L