Author(s)

A.C. Neves, S.M. Niku & R.A. Adey

Abstract

Catastrophic failure of engineering structures is caused by cracks that extend beyond a safe size. Cracks are present to some extent in all structures and can lead to failure or decrease in struc- tural strength if they grow. This paper described an automatic procedure for predicting the fatigue crack growth in two and three dimensional structures and the key data for fracture mechanics based design: the stress intensity factors. The procedure is implemented in a general purpose engineering analysis system BEASY. The system uses a dual boundary element technique to simplify the modelling of the cracks and to provide highly accurate stress intensity factors. Applications are presented for single and multi- ple cracks. 1.0 Introduction The cost to industry of fracture was recently estimated in a report of

Keywords