Tension of a plate containing an embedded elliptical crack

This paper deals with the tension of finite thickness plates containing an embedded elliptical crack located at an arbitrary position with one of its principal diameters parallel to the plate surfaces. The analysis is performed by means of a modified body force method, in which the accuracy and the validity are greatly improved by using reasonable patterns of the body force densities and the resultant force boundary conditions. Numerical calculations are done for various combinations of the location, the shape and the size of the crack, and practically exact values of the stress intensity factors are determined by extrapolating the numerical results for several mesh patterns. Empirical formulae in polynomial forms are also presented for convenience of practical use.