Study on the Fracture Process Zone near the Mode I Dynamic Crack Tip

Evaluation of the shape and size of the fracture process zone near the mode I dynamic crack tip is still a problem unsolved completely at present. The research on the relationship between the fracture process zone and crack velocity near the mode I dynamic crack tip is quite limited, and some researchers have also developed experimental methods or numerical methods. In this research, based on the theory of elastodynamics and the complex stress function method, an approximate method for solving the mode I dynamic crack problem was proposed. The fracture process zone near the mode I dynamic crack tip was analyzed. The results showed that the areas of the fracture process zone determined based on the approximate method are nearly the same as the results obtained based on the well-known stress fields. The approximate method could provide a good reference for determining the fracture process zone near the mode I dynamic crack tip since no analytic methods had been found for evaluating the fracture process zone near the dynamic crack tip to the authors’ knowledge.