A mix-mode cohesive fracture model considering tension, compression and shear material behaviour is presented, which has wide applications to geotechnical problems. The model considers both elastic and inelastic displacements. Inelastic displacement comprises fracture and plastic displacements. The norm of inelastic displacement is used to control the fracture behaviour. Meantime, a failure fun...

The energy release rate (ERR) proposed by Irwin based on a theory by Griffith [1, 2] has been extensively used as a fracture criterion in 2D for brittle domains. Under in-plane mixed mode loading (modes I+II), the direction of crack initiation from cracks and sharp V-notches was determined by the orientation at which the ERR attains its maximum. Using the newly developed asymptotic expansion pr...

Ceramic coatings deposited on metal substrates generally develop significant compressive stresses when cooled from the temperature at which they are processed as a result of thermal expansion mismatch. One of the main failure modes for these coatings is edge delamination. For an ideally brittle interface, the edge delamination of a compressed thin film involves mode II interface cracking. The c...

We study mode-I fracture in a viscoelastic lattice model with a nonlinear force law, with a focus on the velocity and linear stability of the steady-state propagating solution. This study is a continuation both of the study of the piecewise-linear model in mode I, and the study of more general nonlinear force laws in mode-III fracture. At small driving, there is a strong dependency of the veloc...

An analysis is presented for transient response of a mode-III interfacial crack propagating between two dissimilar piezoelectric half spaces. The dynamic fracture toughness of a piezoelectric interface is examined, which is a central issue related to the interface strength of multi-layered sensors and ferroelectric thin film devices. For the mode-III crack propagation in piezoelectric materials...

This paper presents a Galerkin-based meshless method for calculating stress-intensity factors (SIFs) for a stationary crack in two-dimensional functionally graded materials of arbitrary geometry. The method involves an element-free Galerkin method (EFGM), where the material properties are smooth functions of spatial coordinates and two newly developed interaction integrals for mixed-mode fractu...

The cracked Brazilian disc (CBD) specimen is widely used in order to determine mode-I/II and mixed-mode fracture toughness of a rock medium. In this study, the stress intensity factor (SIF) on the crack-tip in this specimen is calculated for various geometrical crack conditions using the extended-finite element method (X-FEM). This method is based upon the finite element method (FEM). In this m...

Cracked and un-cracked Brazilian disc specimens subjected to diametral compression were used for conducting fracture toughness and tensile strength experiments on a polymer concrete (PC) material. The value of mode I fracture toughness (KIc) was determined from the center- cracked Brazilian disc and the indirect tensile strength (σt) was obtained from the un-cracked Brazilian disc specimen. The...

The saturation-strip model for piezoelectric crack is re-examined in a permeable environment to analyze fracture toughness of a piezoelectric ceramic. In this study, a permeable crack is modeled as a vanishing thin but finite rectangular slit with surface charge deposited along crack surfaces. This permeable saturation crack model reveals that there exists a possible leaky mode for electrical f...