STRESS SINGULARITIES AT CRACK CORNERS

In this paper the stress and displacement fields near an embedded crac k corner in a linear elastic medium are analytically computed. The con ical-spherical coordinate system is introduced to solve this problem. It is observed that the strength of the stress singularity depends on the angle of the crack corner. The singularity becomes weaker, varying from r(-1) to r(0), as the angle of the crack corner varies from 360 degrees to 0 degrees. Both symmetric and skew-symmetric loadings give the same variation of the behavior of the stress singularity. It is al so found that the order of the singularity is independent of the Poiss on's ratio, unlike the corner cracks at a free surface where Poisson's ratio affects the results.