Abstract
In this paper, a weight function method based on the first four terms of a Taylor’s series expansion is proposed to determine the stress intensity factors of functionally graded plates with semi-elliptical surface cracks. Cracked surfaces that are subjected to constant, linear, parabolic and cubic stress fields are considered. The weight functions for the surface, deepest and general points on the crack faces of long and deep cracked functionally graded plates are derived, which has never been done before in the literature. The accuracy of the method in this study is then validated by comparing the results with those of finite element modeling. The numerical results indicate that the derived weight functions are highly accurate and robust enough to predict the stress intensity factors for cracked functionally graded plates subjected to non-uniform stress distributions. The weight function method is therefore a time-saving technique and suitable for handling non-uniform stress fields.
Highlights
Graded material (FGM) is a new type of composite material, which consists of two or more types of material with different properties
The results show that the generated FE models are suitable for addressing cases with non-uniform stress fields and calculating the stress intensity factor (SIF) of surface cracks found on functionally graded (FG) plates
It can be concluded that the weight function method is accurate for evaluating the SIFs of cracked FG plates subjected to non-uniform stress
Summary
Graded material (FGM) is a new type of composite material, which consists of two or more types of material with different properties. (FE) modeling and mesh generation are extremely time-consuming processes when various stress distributions are taken into account, and it is difficult to calculate the SIFs of all the points on the crack front To address this shortcoming, an effective analytical technique, namely the weight function method, which is independent of the stress fields, was introduced to determine the SIFs for various loading conditions. The newly derived weight functions of the surface, deepest and general points within the range of 0.2 ≤ a/c ≤ 1.0 and 0.1 ≤ a/t ≤ 0.8 are validated by comparing the analytical solutions in this study with the FE results for parabolic or cubic stress distributions, where a/c denotes the aspect ratio and a/t represents the crack depth ratio. The annotation of parameters or symbols used in this study can be found in the “Nomenclature” section of the Supplementary Materials
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
