THE NUMERICAL-SOLUTION OF CAUCHY SINGULAR INTEGRAL-EQUATIONS WITH APPLICATION TO FRACTURE

The present study investigates a numerical algorithm for solving syste ms of Cauchy singular integral equations of the second kind such as th ose which often occur in the analysis of interface crack problems. The algorithm takes advantage of many standard subroutines for performing numerical integrations and can be easily applied to equations which a re defined over different intervals of the dependent variable. The sol ution technique is illustrated by analyzing two homogeneous center cra cked panels: one loaded in tension and the other loaded in shear and b ending. In the second example problem, the presence of crack face fric tion strongly couples the underlying singular integral equations. The numerical results are compared to closed form elasticity solutions and are shown to be extremely accurate. In addition, the study also illus trates the feasibility of using various assumed forms of the undetermi ned functions. By assuming these slightly altered forms, many rather c omplex problems are either solved directly or reduced in complexity.