ELASTO-PLASTIC BRANCHED ANALYSIS FOR AN INTERFACE CRACK BASED ON CRACK ENERGY DENSITY

The elasto- plastic finite element analyses for an interface crack in dissimilar material, based on the crack energy density (CED) concept, are investigated in mode I loading condition. It is confirmed that the values of CED almost remain stable when the notch radius is sufficiently small, both in elastic and elasto-plastic case. Numerical results for both elastic and elasto-plastic cases show that under the mode I loading condition, when the crack propagates to the more stiff material with a small angle, the total CED will become larger than that along the interface. If the crack heads into the more compliant material, the CED will become less than that along the interface.