Brittle-damage analysis of cracks under conditions of plane-strain tensile loading

An abrupt damage model, taking full account of finite geometry changes, is used to study both the shapes of damage zones and the stress strain fields for a plane-strain tensile crack under the small-scale yielding condition. Two typical crack-tip damage profiles are simulated by the element vanish technique. The fracture toughness increment due to damage dissipation is evaluated in terms of the energy release rate