Enhancement/shielding effects of inclusion on arbitrarily located cracks

Abstract

The plane interaction between a circular elastic inclusion and an arbitrarily located and oriented crack or two equal length cracks subjected to a remote mode I stress is investigated. Stress intensity factors are presented for a variety of cracks-inclusion geometries. The solution technique is based on a singular integral method which uses distributions of edge dislocations to represent the cracks in the mathematical model. It is seen that this interaction can produce either an enhancement or a shielding effect on the stress intensity factor, depending on the positions and orientations of the cracks, the size of the inclusion, and the elastic constants of the matrix and the inclusion. © 1993.