Theoretical and experimental investigation of crack propagation direction. Part I

In the present paper the crack propagation direction angles on the basis of three different fracture criteria are found. The maximum tangential stress criterion, the minimum strain energy density criterion and the deformation criterion are used and analysed. The generalized forms of these criteria have been used. It implies that the crack propagation direction angles are obtained with the Williams series expansion in which the higher order terms are kept. The calculations are performed in Waterloo Maple computer algebra software. The analysis of the crack propagation direction angles show that the influence of the higher order terms can't be ignored. The angles differ considerably when the higher order terms are taken into account.