Numerical assessments of cracks in elastic-plastic materials. (Q4436205)

This monograph presents recent results concerning the nonlinear fracture mechanics. It provides a systematic analysis of crack behaviour in elastoplastic materials. The author uses analytic, asymptotic and numerical techniques in order to offer a theoretical background for the application of nonlinear fracture mechanics in practice. The book is divided into 6 chapters and contains an extended bibliography. After an introduction, the second chapter deals with the description of cracks in elastoplastic materials under stationary conditions. The author shows here the influence of high-order expansion solutions for cracks in pressure-sensitive elastoplastic solids. The next chapter is devoted to the important problem of crack behaviour under thermomechanical loading conditions. In such cases, a crack undergoes totally different loading histories from those under uniform temperature. Here the author discusses the evolution of crack tip fields under high temperature gradients. These models could have applications in nuclear safety assessment under thermal loading conditions. The following part describes a new field of fracture mechanics, i.e. interface cracks. The author examines stationary interface cracks tip fields in elastoplastic materials, the quasi-static crack growth, as well as the dynamic interface crack growth. In chapter 5 the author represents numerical results for steady-state crack growth with different mixed-modes. In the final part, high-order solutions for power-law hardening materials are applied to the description of notch behaviour in pressure-sensitive materials. This book is recommended to applied mathematicians, materials scientists, and to all those interested in applied mechanics.