Inelastic material behavior and fracture mechanics: a variational approach

A variational principle is presented, which relates the macroscopic fracture response of a mechanical component to its microscopic, inelastic material behavior. The principle allows a comparison between the crack driving force, expressed by the J-integral, and an integral expression of the fracture resistance. On this basis, the critical values of J are calculated for a Griffith crack under mixed- mode loading. The preliminary check with data available in literature shows a fairly good agreement. (8 refs).