A Brief Evaluation of Approximation Methods for Microcrack Shielding Problems

Abstract

This note can be regarded as a supplement of a paper entitled “On the Use of Approximation Methods for Microcrack Shilding Problems” (H. Cai and K. T. Faber, 1992, ASME J. Appl. Mech. 59, 497–501). In this note, an effective approximation method for microcrack shielding problems is introduced briefly and is further used to study the examples given in the Cai and Faber paper for the interaction of a macrocrack with microcracks. It is found that the applicability range of the present approximation method in which the errors are acceptably small is much larger than that of the approximation methods listed in the Cai and Faber paper.