Damage dependent constitutive behavior and energy release rate for a cohesive zone in a thermoviscoelastic solid

In this paper a cohesive zone is introduced ahead of a crack tip in order t o avoid the singularity at the crack tip. By applying thermodynamics to the cohesive zone and the surrounding body, a fracture criterion will be estab lished so that the inelastic energy dissipation both in the cohesive zone a nd the surrounding bulk material can be distinguished from the energy relea sed by fracture, and the propagation of crack can be predicted. In addition , the cohesive zone constitutive equation is constructed utilizing the Helm holtz free energy in the form of a single hereditary integral for a nonline ar viscoelastic material. The resulting constitutive model for the cohesive zone contains an internal state variable which represents the damage state within the cohesive zone. When the cohesive zone opening displacement is k nown, the energy release rate is thus history dependent, which is expressed in terms of the damage state, the length of separation in the cohesive zon e and the geometric configuration of the cohesive zone opening displacement . Example results contained herein demonstrate this effect.