EFFECT OF CURVATURE AT THE CRACK-TIP ON THE STRESS INTENSITY FACTOR FOR CURVED CRACKS

In this paper, the numerical solution of the hypersingular integral eq uation using the body force method in curved crack problems is present ed. In the body force method, the stress fields induced by two kinds o f standard set of force doublets are used as fundamental solutions. Th en, the problem is formulated as a system of integral equations with t he singularity of the form r-2. In the numerical calculation, two kind s of unknown functions are approximated by the products of the fundame ntal density functions and power series. The calculation shows that th e present method gives rapidly converging numerical results for curved cracks under various geometrical conditions. In addition, a method of evaluation of the stress intensity factors for arbitrary shaped curve d cracks is proposed using the approximate replacement to a simple str aight crack.