ON THE ANALYSIS OF CRACK INTERACTIONS USING WEIGHT FUNCTION METHOD

摘要

A method for the analysis of interaction effect on stress intensity factors of two coplanar cracks using weight function method is presented. It provides more insight and understanding of the interaction behavior of cracks. It is demonstrated that the existence of the second crack will affect the first crack on both weight function and uncracked stress distribution. Application of the weight function method to analyze two coplanar through cracks and two coplanar semicircular surface cracks are conducted. It is shown that for a wide range of distances between neighboring cracks, most of the interaction effect comes from the contribution of the uncracked stress distribution. Therefore, for engineering applications, the interaction effect can be accounted for from the uncracked stress distribution accurately. This provides a simplified method for the crack interaction analysis.