Numerical evaluation of the stress distribution ahead of a crack tip for a finite‐width centre‐cracked specimen loaded by stresses along a portion of the crack

Abstract

Recently, the force balance method (FBM) has been proposed to calculate geometric correction factors for the stress distribution ahead of a crack tip. In this paper, the effectiveness of the FBM is proved by means of a numerical evaluation of the stress distribution ahead of a crack tip in finite‐width centre‐cracked specimens loaded by stresses along a portion of the crack. The finite element method is used for this purpose.