| Abstract: | The following problem is considered: a penny‐shaped crack is located in the plane z=0 of a transversely isotropic elastic space and interacts with two equal and opposite normal forces, which are located arbitrarily, but symmetrically with respect to the plane of the crack. An exact closed‐form solution is obtained and expressed in terms of elementary functions for the fields of stresses and displacements in the whole space. This kind of problem deemed to be intractable by the methods of contemporary mathematical analysis, and has never been attempted before, even in the case of an isotropic body. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
