Stress intensity factors for an arbitrarily oriented crack near a hole in longeron web

Damage-tolerant design of composite components in aerospace structures requires computationally effective stress and failure analysis methods. This study introduces an analytical/numerical method to determine the stress field and the stress intensity factors in a composite longeron web with an arbitrarily oriented straight crack near a hole. Typical of webs in wing longerons with massive belts, the tapered web is loaded in bending and shear. The solution method makes use of the complex potentials in conjunction with the boundary collocation technique. The present results are in close agreement with those obtained by finite element.