symposium 15 - Crack Paths 2024

Cracking of materials in both uniaxial and multiaxial loading conditions has been analyzed for many years. It is worth noting, however, that although most of the research conducted so far concerns isotropic materials such as steel, cast iron, aluminum alloys, nickel alloys or aluminum alloys, with the growing popularity of the use of anisotropic materials, the interest in researching these materials is also growing. Among anisotropic materials, there are such materials as clad, composite or reinforced concrete materials.

Regardless of the materials tested, numerous problems are encountered during the conducted analyzes. In the case of anisotropic materials, the situation becomes even more complicated because the number of independent material constants can even be equal to 21, not 3 as in isotropic materials. Additionally, in a laminar material where each layer has a different Young's modulus, the stiffness of the entire element is an average value that is not really present in any of the layers.

Due to the problems mentioned above, the description of fracture of anisotropic materials becomes very complicated both in simple and complex loading conditions. It seems very important to modify the existing material fracture analyzes for anisotropic materials or to create new solutions. This applies to both the analysis of failure processes and the value of destructive loads under static, dynamic and fatigue conditions, as well as in terms of fracture mechanics or microstructural changes.