Crack kinking in anti-plane shear solved by the Mellin transform

Abstract

The problem of kinking of internal cracks in infinite plates submitted to antiplane shear at infinity was solved by using the Mellin transform. This transform allows a straightforward reduction of it to a system of second order Fredholm integral equations for a pair of functions in terms of which the stress intensity factors at the crack tips may be calculated. Of great interest and of equivocal views is the regime at the vicinity of the corner, the region where the kink is nucleated, and which reflects numerical difficulties arising in the solution of the integral equations. For this purpose an asymptotic expansion is constructed for their kernels and subsequently for the values of SIFs with respect to the length e of the kinked branch. The analysis yielded results which were physically sound, but differing fundamentally with those existing in the literature. These results were in agreement with those obtained for an in-plane loading of the cracks and for cracks in bi-phase materials whose tips are on the interface of the phases.