The singular elastostatic field due to a crack in rubberlike materials

Within the framework of finite-strain elastostatics an asymptotic analysis is carried out in order to calculate the singular field near the crack tip in a slab under conditions of plane deformation. A class of Ogden-Ball hyperelastic rubberlike materials and general loading conditions ensuring vanishing tractions on the crack faces near the crack tip are considered. It is shown that the singular deformation field near the crack tip can be specified by applying a rigid body rotation with a subsequent parallel translation to a so-called canonical field. The adjective canonical is adopted here to denote the field with symmetrically opening crack faces, just resembling the displacement field of the symmetric mode in linear elastic fracture mechanics. No analogy with the antisymmetric mode is possible, and the crack equilibrium criterion requires only one stress intensity factor to be determined.