Abstract
When a stress wave (tensile or compressive) impinges on a crack existing in an elastic medium, reflection, refraction and diffraction-phenomena take place. A result of diffraction is the loading of the crack. While compressive stress-waves do not create any stress concentration at the tip of an existing crack, tensile stress-waves develop stresses at the tip which may cause a propagation of the crack. If the tensile pulse is weak the crack may propagate by steps under the action only of successive tensile stress-pulses, whereas intermediate compressive-stress pulses do not have any influence. A complete study of the phenomena of incubation, initiation and propagation of cracks in thin plates, when they are subjected to a compressive pulse, which is subsequently reflected from the free boundaries of the plate and changed to complicated wave-trains, was undertaken in this paper, based on the method of caustics. Interesting results that were derived from this experimental study are presented.
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