A new conservation integral for an arbitrarily kinked interfacial crack

Abstract

A new conservation integral consisting of the path and area integral, for an arbitrarily kinked interfacial crack is proposed. The new conservation integral is shown to have the physical meaning of the energy release rate. We present two numerical examples to verify its usefulness; one is the problem of an interfacial crack with a parabolic-curved kink, and the other is the problem of a circular are-shaped interfacial crack with a straight kink.