A cohesive edge crack

The nucleation and growth of a cohesive edge crack is studied. This topic is germane to the initiation and early stage of crack growth during unnotched beam testing, the growth of short edge cracks in finite test pieces, and the formation of tension cracks of geological origin. This paper focuses on an edge crack in a semi-infinite plane, under a uniform far-field tensile stress acting parallel to the plane boundary. Expressions for the Mode I stress-intensity-factor and crack-opening-displacement for an edge crack subjected to arbitrary crack face loading are determined via the weight function method. All of the constants needed to define the weight function and associated integrals are themselves explicit functions of just two constants: fr and ψ. Two types of softening behavior in the cohesive zone are examined: rectangular softening, and linear softening. In each case the process zone size, energy-release-rate, crack-opening displacement and load-ratio are examined. The different test behavior exhibited under load-control versus fixed-grip displacement control is explored. The test control conditions alter the fracture behavior significantly. For a linear softening cohesive edge crack, it is found out that under fixed-grip control (load-control), the process zone size decreases (increases) steadily with increasing traction-free crack length, approaching the semi-infinite crack asymptote from above (below). The differences between load-control versus fixed-grip control decrease rapidly with increasing traction-free crack length.