Please choose your delivery country and your customer group
The formation of a plastic zone at the tip of a tensile crack in an infinite homogeneous medium is considered to take place on a slip plane inclinded at different angles to the crack plane. A discrete dislocation model is used to represent the crack and the plastic zone. It is found that the inclination of the slip plane to the crack plane depends strongly on the applied stress. Similarly, the critical size of the crack also depends strongly on the applied stress when the slip plane is inclined at different angles to the crack plane. The size of the plastic crack is related to the total elastic strain energy of the crack in an empirical manner. The length to which the plastic zone is spread along the slip plane is found to be a maximum at an inclination of the slip plane to the crack plane near pi/3 for all values of applied stress.