Fracture Mechanics and Crack Growth

The aim of the book is to present the recent advances related to the following two topics: - how to determine the mechanical fields close to the material or geometrical singularities such as cracks? and - how failure criteria can be established as function of the singularity degrees related to these discontinuities?Concerning the determination of the mechanical fields close to crack tip, a presentation of most traditional methods is done in order to classify them into two major categories. The first one is based on the stress field such as Airy function and the second one resolves the problem going from functions related to displacement fields. Then, a new method based on the hamiltonian system will be deeply presented.The second part of the book describes methodologies to establish the critical fracture loads. Singular fields for homogeneous and non-homogeneous problems near crack tips, v-notches, corners, interfaces… associated to stress concentrations allow to determine the basis of failure criteria.