Effect of Stop Hole on Stress Intensity Factor in Crack Propagation Path

The influence of a stop hole on the stress intensity factor (SIF) of a crack is investigated herein using J integral. In structures, crack may occur because of cyclic loads or initial defects. In this case, a stop hole may be provided to temporarily stop the growth of crack before a fracture occurs because of crack propagation. In the SIFs handbook, the BCF, FI for an infinite plate with a hole at some distance from both sides of the crack can be obtained. However, the BCF, FI for the case of a stop hole in a finite plate is not available, unlike the present study. In this study, J integral is used to evaluate the SIF of the crack propagating to the stop hole. For comparison, calculation is conducted for the cases when a stop hole is present slightly away from both ends of the crack, and the case when no stop hole is present at both ends of the crack. When the stop hole is located behind the crack, and as the crack becomes closer to the stop hole, the boundary correlation factor (BCF), FI of the SIF becomes larger. Finally, we found that the closer the crack is to the stop hole, the faster is the crack propagation because of the larger BCF. Through this study, we were able to evaluate the characteristics of crack according to the mutual distance in the presence of a stop hole.