Close interaction of coplanar circular cracks in an elastic medium (Q1088510)

A new method is proposed for the stress analysis of an elastic space weakened by several arbitrarily located coplanar circular cracks under the action of an arbitrary normal pressure. The method is based on a new type of integral equations which has definite advantages over the existing methods: equations are non-singular, the iteration procedure is rapidly convergent even for very close interactions; there is no need to solve the integral equations if one is interested only in obtaining the upper and the lower bounds for the quantities of interest. In the case of the cracks far apart, these bounds are so close that provide, in fact, a sufficiently accurate solution to the problem. The method allows us also to obtain a practically exact numerical solution to the problem of very close interactions. Several illustrative examples are considered.