Finite element analysis of cracked bodies to determine stress intensity factors

A method for the computation of the stress intensity and associated geometrical correction factors by use of the finite element analysis is presented. The lack of ability to represent crack tip stress conditions has been the shortcoming of the conventinal techniques in finite-element solutions of problems of cracked bodies. The proposed method provides the representation of crack tip stress conditions with elliptic displacement functions which lead to the direct computation of stress intensity factors. The method is applied to several crack configurations with relatively coarse finite-element networks and the accuracy is found to be satisfactory when compared with results of previous workers.