Numerical study on the symmetric and asymmetric orientation of the crack branching in 2D plate

The phenomenon of crack branching is one of the typical fracture behaviours. The effect of crack branching orientation is investigated in this paper. By considering a static branched crack in a 2D plate under uniaxial traction, the numerical study is carried out for two study cases. The first study case is the symmetric crack branching in which the various crack branching length and orientation have the same value between both crack branching. The second case is the asymmetric case crack branching. In this case, both crack branching length has a particular constant value, Moreover, the orientation of first crack branching is constant and then the second one has various values. The stress intensity factors of the crack tips are calculated for both study cases. It is revealed for the symmetric case; the increasing of the crack branching length will increase the value of stress intensity factors KI for various orientations of crack branching. In contrast, the stress intensity factors KI will tend to decrease along with the increasing of the crack branching orientation. Moreover, the stress intensity factors KI of first crack branching will increase, but the stress intensity factors KI of second crack branching will decrease along with increasing of the second orientation crack branching for the asymmetric case. Furthermore, the direction the stress intensity factors KII will prone to change along with the increasing of the crack branching orientation. The stress intensity factor KII tends to increase along with the increasing of the crack branching orientation as well as the increasing of the crack branching length for the symmetric case. And then the increase of constant angle of first crack branching will increase significantly the stress intensity factors KII of the first crack tip along with the increasing of the second crack branching angle for the asymmetric case.