ANALYSIS OF ASYMMETRIC KINKED CRACKS OF ARBITRARY SIZE, LOCATION AND ORIENTATION - PART I - REMOTE COMPRESSION

In this paper, the stress intensity factors of interacting kinked crac ks in an elastic solid under remote compression and the overall strain s of the solid are determined numerically. The kinked cracks are in ge neral asymmetric, unequal, and arbitrarily oriented and located. Each kinked crack consists of a closed frictional main crack, and traction free kinks modeled by continuous dislocation distributions. The origin al problem is decomposed into straight crack problems such that the ma in cracks are subjected to dislocation and shear traction loadings. Th e model is used to investigate the dependence of the stress intensity factors and the overall strains on the crack configuration, i.e., a si ngle fault of cracks, parallel faults, crossed faults, periodic and ra ndom crack arrays, and on the geometrical and physical parameters such as the fault angle and the lateral confinement.