Configurational stability of a crack propagating in a material with mode-dependent fracture energy – Part II: Drift of fracture facets in mixed-mode I+II+III

In earlier papers (Leblond et al., 2011; 2019), we presented linear stability analyses of the coplanar propagation of a crack loaded in mixed-mode I+III, based on a “double” propagation criterion combining (Griffith, 1920)’s energetic condition and (Goldstein and Salganik, 1974)’s principle of local symmetry. The difference between the two papers was that in the more recent one, the local value of the critical energy-release-rate was no longer considered as a constant, but heuristically allowed to depend upon the ratio of the local mode III to mode I stress intensity factors. This led to a much improved, qualitatively acceptable agreement of theory and experiments, for the “threshold” value of the ratio of the unperturbed mode III to mode I stress intensity factors, above which coplanar propagation becomes unstable. In this paper, the analysis is extended to the case where a small additional mode II loading component is present in the initially planar configuration of the crack, generating a small, general kink of this crack from the moment it is applied. The main new effect resulting from presence of such a loading component is that the instability modes present above the threshold must drift along the crack front during its propagation. This prediction may be useful for future theoretical interpretations of a number of experiments where such a drifting motion was indeed observed.