| Abstract: | The stress intensity factors (SIFs) are evaluated for flat elliptical cracks located in a transversally isotropic material (cracks are assumed perpendicular to the transtropy axis) under an arbitrary load and symmetric temperature. The SIFs for an elliptical crack in a transversally isotropic medium are determined using the formulas (derived by the author in his previous studies) of transition from an isotropic to transversally isotropic material and the relative problem for an isotropic medium. It is proved that these formulas can be employed for an arbitrary homogeneous transversally isotropic material (no matter whether the roots of some characteristic equation of the material are real or complex) with an arbitrary flat crack or a system of coplanar flat cracks, including elliptical ones, under an arbitrary load and symmetric temperature. A transversally isotropic material with two coplanar elliptical cracks is considered as an illustrative example. The dependences of the SIFs on the parameters of cracks and their arrangement at a decreasing temperature are presented. S. P. Timoshenko Institute of Mechanics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Kiev. Translated from Prikladnaya Mekhanika, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 96–105, April, 2000. |
