Application of a weight function based method to assess partially closed cracks

Abstract A new method to study the contact problem in cracks subjected to a strong gradient in the surface direction was presented in a previous work. The method uses the weight function corresponding to the geometry produced by the partial closure of the crack, and is useful to solve the case of an arbitrary monotonically increasing load applied to an infinite cracked plate. In the present work, we study the cases of centre-cracked strips and three-dimensional embedded circular cracks subjected to different load configurations. Weight functions provided by handbooks as well as a geometrically defined weight function are evaluated and used to solve these problems. A modified weight function is presented for the centre-cracked. strip. All results are compared with those obtained using Finite Element and Boundary Element Methods, with good agreement.