A RIGID-PLASTIC ANALYSIS OF THE LIMITING EQUILIBRIUM OF AN EDGE CLEAVAGE CRACK IN A RECTANGULAR PLATE

The analytic solution of the plane rigid-plastic problem of an edge cl eavage crack parallel to the base of a rectangular plate is constructe d. The geometry of the domain and the loading conditions (concentrated loads acting along a normal to the crack line) simulate a widely used scheme of experiments for determining the crack resistance of materia ls. The solution of the problem leads to a scheme for the how of the m aterial ahead of the crack which is accompanied by the formulation of a transverse microcrack. A variational principle for problems of rigid -plastic analysis, taking into account formation of cracks, formulated and proved in [1], is used to solve the problem. Copyright (C) 1996 E lsevier Science Ltd.