A new procedure for investigating three-dimensional stress fields in a thin plate with a through-the-thickness crack

In the paper, a new procedure is proposed to investigate three-dimensional fracture problems of a thin elastic plate with a long through-the-thickness crack under remote uniform tensile loading. The new procedure includes a new analytical method and high accurate finite element simulations. In the part of theoretical analysis, three-dimensional Maxwell stress functions are employed in order to derive three-dimensional crack tip fields. Based on the theoretical analysis, an equation which can describe the relationship among the three-dimensional J-integral J(z), the stress intensity factor K(z) and the tri-axial stress constraint level T _z (z) is derived first. In the part of finite element simulations, a fine mesh including 153360 elements is constructed to compute the stress field near the crack front, J(z) and T _z (z). Numerical results show that in the plane very close to the free surface, the K field solution is still valid for in-plane stresses. Comparison with the numerical results shows that the analytical results are valid.