A PC-based system for evaluation of three-dimensional stress intensity factors

This study describes a PC-based system to evaluate three-dimensional (3D) s tress intensity factors (SIFs) using various simplified formulas found in l iterature. In general, this kind of system has to be flexible in extending its functions, and easy for ordinary engineers to use. It is also important to keep system compact by sharing common functions among various formulas for different crack and structure geometries. To meet these conditions, the present system is fully designed based on an object-oriented approach, and built in a PC/Windows environment using one of the object-oriented languag es Visual C++. About 50 different formulas of 3D-SIFs are implemented in it s first version. Better usability of the system is clearly demonstrated thr ough actual usability tests for persons with and without experience on SIF evaluation. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.