Opening‐Mode Crack in a Unidirectional Composite Material

The plane static elastic problem of stress concentration in a unidirectional discrete infinite composite weakened by fiber breaks on a line normal to the reinforcement direction (an analog of the Griffith problem of elasticity theory) is considered. The composite is subjected to uniform stresses at infinity, and the crack edges are loaded symmetrically by the normal pressure. The problem reduces to constructing a polynomial with known values at the points of fiber breaks. The stress distribution along the line of breaks is obtained in the form of a fractional rational function of fiber number.