Summary: Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids
51 (2003) 1287­1304
www.elsevier.com/locate/jmps
Brittle fracture dynamics with arbitrary paths I.
Kinking of a dynamic crack in general
antiplane loading
M. Adda-Bediaa;, R. Ariasb
aLaboratoire de Physique Statistique de l'Ecole Normale SupÃerieure, 24 rue Lhomond,
F-75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
bDepartamento de FÃsica, Facultad de Ciencias FÃsicas y MatemÃaticas, Universidad de Chile,
Casilla 487-3 Santiago, Chile
Received 11 April 2002; accepted 29 January 2003
Abstract
We present a new method for determining the elasto-dynamic stress ÿelds associated with the
propagation of anti-plane kinked or branched cracks. Our approach allows the exact calculation
of the corresponding dynamic stress intensity factors. The latter are very important quantities in
dynamic brittle fracture mechanics, since they determine the crack path and eventual branching
instabilities. As a ÿrst illustration, we consider a semi-inÿnite anti-plane straight crack, initially
propagating at a given time-dependent velocity, that changes instantaneously both its direction
and its speed of propagation. We will give the explicit dependence of the stress intensity factor

Source: Adda-Bedia, Mokhtar - Laboratoire de Physique Statistique, Département de Physique, École Normale Supérieure

Collections: Physics