EVALUATING THE EFFICIENCY OF FEM TO STUDY THE EFFECT OF PLATE WIDTH AND HOLE ON THE STRESS INTENSITY FACTOR IN CRACKED PLATE

One of the important parameters in fracture mechanics is the stress intensity factor (SIF) which is used to predict crack growth and residual life of the cracked member. The SIF represents the stresses field around the crack tips. One of the effective factors on stress intensity factor is the crack length (to plate width) ratio, which has been studied by researchers with different close form methods such as the Laurent expansions method. This article aims at studying the qualification of finite element method (FEM) to evaluate the effect of width of plates with displacement controlled loading on SIF. For this purpose, plates with different aspect ratios and crack lengths are modeled by FEM using singular elements at the crack tips and the SIFs are calculated by crack extension technique. The present study represents that the results from this technique are in good agreement with the results from other close form techniques available in references. In addition, the effect of holes existing with different distances from the crack tip on SIF is examined. Results show that this effect is very small for the holes located over 10 percent of plate width away from the crack tip.