Abstract
The effect of profuse micro-cracking at the tip of a macroscopic crack is studied with emphasis on the reduction in stress intensity, or shielding, within the micro-crack region. Shielding contributions arise from two consequences of micro-cracking, reduction in stiffness and release of residual stress. For the most part the study is limited to the lowest order effect of micro-cracking associated with relatively low micro-crack densities. Shielding results for arbitrarily shaped micro-crack zones are obtained for the case where the orientations of the micro-cracks are randomly distributed. Other possibilities are also discussed and contrasted, and the major uncertainties in quantifying the phenomenon are identified.
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