Contour integrals for 2D thermoelastic cracked bodies

The advantages are discussed of various methods of calculating stress intensity factors at the tips of cracks in two dimensional bodies under steady state thermoelastic loading using boundary element methods and contour integration. First, some path independent contour integrals for steady state thermoelastic problems are rederived in a shorter and more general manner. Domain integrals need not be evaluated either for steady state calculations or for small contours for transient calculations. Then, the superposition method for transient problems is considered. This requires integration on the crack faces, as well as around the crack tips. The resulting loss of accuracy is calculated for two simple cases.