On the numerical Green’s function technique for cracks in Reissner’s plates

The numerical Green’s function (NGF) technique, previously proposed by the present authors, is here extended to fracture mechanics problems involving Reissner’s plate theory. The technique numerically produces a plate bending fundamental Green’s function that automatically includes embedded cracks to be used in the classical boundary element method (BEM) to solve this class of problems. The applications discussed include torsion, bending moment and shear force loadings. In addition, also presented is a series of numerical results computed in terms of normalized stress intensity factors to illustrate the good accuracy of the procedure.