BRITTLE-DAMAGE ANALYSIS OF CRACKS UNDER CONDITIONS OF PLANE-STRAIN TENSILE LOADING

An abrupt damage model, taking full account of finite geometrychanges, is used to study both the shapes of damage zones and the stress strain fieldsfor a plane-strain tensile crack under the small-scale yielding condition. Two typicalcrack-tip damage profiles are simulated by the element vanish technique. The fracturetoughness increment due to damage dissipation is evaluated in terms of the energyrelease rate.