CRACKS OF FRACTAL GEOMETRY WITH UNILATERAL CONTACT AND FRICTION INTERFACE CONDITIONS

Structures involving cracks of fractal geometry are studied here, on t he assumption that at the interface unilateral contact and friction bo undary conditions hold. Approximating the fractal by a sequence of cla ssical surfaces or curves and combining this procedure with a two-leve l contact-friction algorithm based on the optimization of the potentia l and of the complementary energy, we get the solution of the problem after some appropriate transformations relying on the S.V.D.-decomposi tion of the equilibrium matrix. Numerical examples, using singular ele ments for the consideration of the crack singularity, illustrate the t heory.