Crack-Path Effect on Material Toughness

The material-toughening mechanism based on the crack-path deflection is studied. This investigation is based on a model which consists of a macrocrack (semi-infinite crack), with a curvilinear segment at the crack tip, situated in a brittle solid. The effect of material toughening is evaluated by comparison of the remote stress field parameters, such as the stress intensity factors (controlled by a loading on a macroscale), to effective values of these parameters acting in the vicinity of a crack tip (microscale). The effects of the curvilinear crack path are separated into three groups: crack-tip direction, crack-tip geometry pattern-shielding, and crack-path length change. These effects are analyzed by investigation of selected curvilinear crack patterns such as a macrocrack with simple crack-tip kink in the form of a circular arc and a macrocrack with a segment at the crack tip in the form of a sinusoidal wave. In conjunction with this investigation, a numerical procedure has been developed for the analysis of curvilinear cracks (or a system of cracks) in a two-dimensional linear elastic solid. The formulation is based on the solution of a system of singular integral equations. This numerical scheme was applied to the cases of finite and semi-infinite cracks.