Accurate knowledge of stress/displacement field in a cracked specimen is very important for fracture analysis and for instance in the case of quasi-brittle materials, where the zone of non- linear behavior affecting the overall fracture process is larger than in…
Accurate knowledge of stress/displacement field in a cracked specimen is very important for fracture analysis and for instance in the case of quasi-brittle materials, where the zone of non- linear behavior affecting the overall fracture process is larger than in other (brittle) materials, it can play a key role. In this paper, it is shown that Williams expansion can describe the crack-tip fields reliably, provided that considerably more than one or two terms of the power series are taking into account. Such an approach, referred to as multi-parameter fracture mechanics, is usually not used for a common assessment of crack behavior. The study presented shows that especially in larger distances from the crack tip the higher-order terms are crucial in order to minimize the error corre- sponding with use of only one or two fracture parameters (the first and second terms of Williams expansion). In other words, considering of the higher-order terms of the Williams expansion is essential if knowledge of accurate stress/displacement fields around the crack tip in the analysed specimen/structure is required.