Brittle fracture and fatigue propagation paths of 3D plane cracks under uniform remote tensile loading

Fatigue and brittle fracture propagation paths of arbitrary plane cracks, loaded in mode I, embedded in an infinite isotropic elastic body, are investigated. The crack advance is supposed to be governed by the stress intensity factor, for instance through Paris' law in fatigue or Irwin's criterion in brittle fracture. The method used is based on successive iterations of the three-dimensional weight-function theory of Bueckner-Rice, that gives...