Revisiting energy release rates in brittle fracture (Q620510)

The paper deals, in a two-dimensional setting of linear anisotropic elasticity, with the evolution of a crack path. Closed connected one-dimensional sets, called add-cracks, are added to the tip of given cracks. Via blow-up Hausdorff limits the energy release rate of a sequence of add-cracks is defined and, under certain assumptions, is shown to exist. The problem of maximing energy release rates is investigated under assumptions about the stress intensity factors. As an application, the authors demonstrate that, modulo a meta-stability principle, a moving crack cannot generically kink while growing continuously in time.