Comparison of criteria on the direction of crack extension

There are three famous criteria for the prediction on the direction of crack extension: maximum energy release rate criterion, local symmetric criterion and maximum stress criterion. It has already been proved that these criteria are different. In this paper, we show how to measure the difference between maximum energy release rate criterion and maximum stress criterion. The results in this paper and special solutions in Amestoy and Leblond (Internat. J. Solids Struct. 29 (1992) 465) indicate that it is enough to use the maximum stress criterion for the numerical prediction of crack path, if the stress intensity factor of the shearing mode is not too big.