Determination of stress intensity factor and T-stress in an anisotropic plate

Determination of stress intensity factor and T-stress in an anisotropic plate under bending, twisting moments and transverse shear loads is studied including the effect of transverse shear deformation. Introducing stress functions and assuming the generalized stresses and displacements are in a separation of variable form, an asymptotic analysis is performed through using complex variable theory to determine the asymptotic crack-tip fields for anisotropic plates. Displacement and stress fields including the T-stresses in bending and transverse shear are presented. The stress field and energy release rate for isotropic plates are also provided. The expression of the path-independent integral J in terms of the generalized stresses and displacement gradients is derived and the relationship between J and the stress intensity factors is also obtained. In conjunction with finite element analysis, a simple and accurate approach to determine the stress intensity factors and T-stresses is proposed based on the developed formulation in this paper.