Stiffness Derivative Method Research Articles

Stress Intensity Factor Solutions for Internal Longitudinal Semi-Circular Surface Flaws in a Cylinder Under Arbitrary Loading

The behavior of semi-circular surface flaws in cylinders is of interest in the technology of pressure vessels. The object of this study is to determine the stress intensity factor distribution around the crack front under arbitrary loading conditions for a longitudinal semi-circular flaw with Ri/t = 10; where Ri is the inside radius of the cylinder, and t is the cylinder thickness. Six crack depths are studied under various loading conditions: a/t = 0.10, 0.25, 0.50, 0.65, 0.80, and 0.90, where a is the circular flaw radius. In general, the finite element method is used to determine the displacement solution. Parks’ stiffness derivative method is used to find the stress intensity factor distribution around the semi-circle. The immediate crack tip geometry is modeled by use of a “macro-element” containing over 1600 degrees of freedom. Four separate loadings are considered: 1) constant, 2) linear, 3) quadratic, and 4) cubic crack surface pressure. From these loadings, nondimensional magnification factors are derived to represent the resulting stress intensity factors. Comparisons are made with other investigators and results agree within 5 percent of published results.

Weight functions from virtual crack extension

AbstractThe stiffness‐derivative method of Parks1 for calculating the linear elastic crack tip stress intensity factor for any symmetric crack configuration and a particular loading is extended to calculate the weight function vector field2,3 which serves as a Green's function for the stress intensity factor. The method, which combines the observations of Rice3 on the weight function and of Zienkiewicz4 on the differential stiffness method, permits very efficient determination of the weight function, requiring only one additional back‐substitution on the already‐factored stiffness matrix. Thus, the stress intensity factor for arbitrary loading of this configuration can subsequently be determined by quadrature alone. The promising extension of the method to three‐dimensional configurations is outlined.While this manuscript was under review, the authors became aware of the recent work of Vanderglas,21 in which the same approach as ours is used to extend the stiffness derivative method. The present work was then voluntarily revised in order to address further certain aspects of the topic of shape function perturbation, which Vanderglas noted.