ANALYSIS OF CRACKED PLATES WITH A BONDED PATCH

The problem of a cracked plate repaired by an adhesively bonded patch is studied. A shear spring model is adopted to reduce the problem to the analysis of a cracked plate and a patch subjected to external loads and interacting adhesive shear. While the patch is treated by the finite element method, the cracked plate is analyzed by the boundary clement method, in which a special fundamental solution satisfying the boundary condition on the crack surface is introduced. The present formulation provides comparable results on the stress intensity factor of the patched crack with less computational effort.