A line spring model is developed for analyzing the fracture problem of cracked metallic plate repaired with the double-sided adhesively bonded composite patch. The restraining action of the bonded patch is modeled as continuous distributed linear springs bridging the crack faces provided that the cracked plate is subjected to extensional load. The effective spring constant is determined from 1-D bonded joint theory. The hyper-singular integral equation (HSIE), which can be solved using the second kind Chebyshev polynomial expansion method, is applied to determine the crack opening displacements (COD) and the crack tip stress intensity factors (SIF) of the repaired cracked plate. The numerical result of SIF for the crack-tip correlates very well with the finite element (FE) computations based on the virtual crack closure technique (VCCT). The present analysis approaches and mathematical techniques are critical to the successful design, analysis and implementation of crack patching.
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