Stress Intensity Factors of Double and Multiple Edge Cracks

In this paper stress intensity factors of double and multiple edge cracks in a semi-infinite plate is considered. The problem is considered by solving a system of hypersingular integral equations based on the body force method. First, two edge cracks A and B having different crack lengths and inclination angles are analyzed and the effect of crack B upon crack A is investigated. Then, stress intensity factor(SIF) of crack A is found to be almost constant independent of the wide variation of inclination angle B if the crack tip B is fixed. Second, periodic edge cracks are systematically analyzed with varying the number, distance and angle of cracks. Then the interaction effect is found to appear mostly from the distances of crack tip independent of the angle. Numerical results are also shown when crack parameters are slightly changed from average values in almost equally spaced multiple edge cracks.