Biaxial load effect on crack initiation for orthotropic materials

This paper is concerned with the study of the elastostatic fracture response of an orthotropic plate with an inclined crack and subjected at infinity to a biaxial uniform load. To this end an unconventional approach to the derivation of the complex variable expressions of the elastic fields is proposed. The above formulation has been used to solve the boundary value problem as superposition of Mode-I and Mode-II crack problems and it is shown that the near tip asymptotic expressions of stress and displacement fields are affected by non-singular terms originated by load biaxiality. The maximum circumferential tensile stress criterion is applied in order to investigate the effects of non-singular terms on the angle of crack extension.