A novel analysis of stress intensity factors for distributed non-planar surface cracks and its application to material quality control

A novel method for the numerical analysis of stress intensity factors (SIFs) was developed for multiple, 3-D-distributed, semi-elliptical cracks on the surface of a semi-infinite elastic body under arbitrary loading conditions. Emphasis was placed on the nature of interactions between cracks, with examination by the distributed infinitesimal dislocation loop technique, an eigenstrain method. SIFs of 100 distributed surface cracks were acquired in approximately 15 min when calculated on a standard personal computer, owing to the numerical integration approaches and meshing procedure adopted. The validity of the obtained results is verified and its applicability to some engineering problems is discussed.