Interaction of two unequal cracks in a prestressed fiber reinforced composite

摘要

We consider an elastic orthotropic materialrepresenting a fiber reinforced composite. The composite isprestressed and contains two collinear cracks having differentlengths. The faces of the cracks are acted by symmetricallydistributed constant normal incremental stresses. We determinethe critical values of the applied incremental stresses for whichthe cracks tips start to propagate and we analyse the interaction ofthe cracks as function of their lengths and of the distance between the cracks.