Evaluation of the T-stress for interacting cracks

This paper investigates the T-stress for interacting cracks in general case. The cracks are located in an arbitrary position with the remote tension. If one uses the traction along crack face as unknown function, the problem for interacting cracks can be reduced to a Fredholm integral equation. The solution of integral equation provides necessary knowledge for evaluating the T-stress at a crack tip. The T-stress at the crack tip is generally composed of three parts, one from the uniform field and other two from the perturbation field. Explicit equations for the three parts are proposed. The case for two collinear cracks is taken as an example to examine the accuracy of the suggested numerical method. Many results for T-stress for interacting cracks are presented. It is shown that the interaction is significant for the closer cracks.