Strain energy approach to compute stress intensity factors for isotropic homogeneous and bi-material V-notches

A strain energy approach (SEA) is developed to compute the general stress intensity factors (SIFs) for isotropic homogeneous and bi-material plates containing cracks and notches subject to mode I, II and III loading conditions. The approach is based on the strain energy of a control volume around the notch tip, which may be computed by using commercial finite element packages. The formulae are simple and easy to implement. Various numerical examples are presented and compared to corresponding published results or results that are computed using different numerical methods to demonstrate the accuracy of the SEA. Many of those results are new, especially for the cases of bi-material notches where the problem is quite complicated. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.