Thermoelastic Fracture Mechanics using Boundary Elements. Topics in Engineering, Vol 39

Abstract

1R21. Thermoelastic Fracture Mechanics using Boundary Elements. Topics in Engineering, Vol 39. - Edited by DN dell’Erba (Wessex Inst of Tech, Southampton, SO40 7AA, UK). WIT Press, Southampton, UK. 2002. 146 pp. ISBN 1-85312-849-X. $109.00.Reviewed by M Bonnet (Lab de Mec des Solides, Ecole Polytechnique, Route de Saclay, Palaiseau Cedex, F-91128, France).This book comprises eight chapters, a bibliographical section, but no index. Its contents may be roughly divided into three parts: introduction and thermoelasticity and fracture mechanics background (Chapters 1 and 2, 22 pages); thermoelastic dual BEM formulation (Chapters 3 and 4, 38 pages); thermoelastic fracture mechanics computations (Chapters 5–7, 66 pages), with conclusions provided in Chapter 8. The goal of the book is to describe the formulation and implementation of the dual BEM (DBEM), which is a variant of the displacement discontinuity method (DDM), in the context of 3D thermoelastic crack problems. The dual BEM for crack problems has been investigated for a long time by the author’s advisor and other collaborators, and the main contribution of the work under review is the treatment of thermoelasticity. Chapter 1 is a general introduction to the work, allowing the author to highlight the rest of the book contents and put it all in perspective, and Chapter 2 reviews the necessary background on thermoelasticity and fracture mechanics. Chapter 3 reviews classical material concerning BEM formulations for thermoelasticity and its standard implementation. Traction boundary integral equations are introduced as well, as they are needed for the dual BEM formulation. The latter is expounded in detail in Chapter 4, together with implementation details such as the handling of the strongly and hypersingular integrals by the direct method of Guiggiani et al. 1 involved in the dual BEM. Special crack front elements and techniques for the numerical evaluation of stress intensity factors (SIFs) are presented in Chapter 5, together with several numerical examples demonstrating the accuracy of SIF evaluation for thermoelastic crack problems by the dual BEM. Chapter 6 is devoted to the formulation and implementation of J-integral for 3D thermoelastic crack problems, and the application of a decomposition technique similar to that of Rigby and Aliabadi 2 or Huber, Nickel, and Kuhn 3. Several supporting numerical examples are also presented. Chapter 7 is devoted to the incremental simulation thermal fatigue crack propagation, under Paris law. Several 3D simulations are presented, whose results are physically reasonable, but are not quantitatively compared to other sources. Generally speaking, this book is a clear and readable account of the research undertaken over several years by the author. It is in fact a published version of his doctoral research work, prepared at the Wessex Institute of Technology, to which WIT Press, the publisher of this book, is closely associated. As such, although the research work reported is interesting in itself, the book is very much focused on the particular line of investigation followed and lacks the completeness and perspective which would be expected of a good reference text. The overall presentation is of good quality. The book is hardbound. The typesetting, done with LaTeX, is clear even for the most complex mathematical expressions inherent with the subject matter; the figures are also of good quality. In conclusion, this reviewer expects Theromoelastic Fracture Mechanics using Boundary Elements to be useful mostly to researchers and engineers working in the same general area, and more as a detailed account of recent research than as a reference text. This reviewer strongly objects to the editorial policy behind this book, however, for several reasons: i) $109 (US) for 146 pages, advertisements not included, is a much too expensive price, especially since ii) much of the work is available in archival journal publications by the author and his advisor 4567; besides iii) the potential buyer is not informed that the book is based on a PhD thesis dissertation, and finally iv) many books in this series, including the one under review, substantially overlap each other simply because they are published versions of several PhD theses on computational fracture mechanics by BEM made in the same research group. Therefore, this reviewer advises against purchase of the book. On the other hand, the work itself is good, and its young author is not responsible for the mercantile editorial policy, so this reviewer instead encourages readers to read the papers 4567.