LAUSR

Abstract An analytical method to predict residual strength based on critical crack tip opening angle (CTOA) is proposed in this paper. According to a previous study, the plastic wake profile and then the stationary crack opening profile can be considered as a kind of crack growth resistance. The core idea of the proposed method is transferring critical CTOA to stationary crack opening profile based crack growth resistance curve. M(T) and C(T) specimens are taken to validate this method. All of these predicted results have an accuracy of 4%. In addition, the proposed method has successfully predicted the residual strength of rivet stiffened panels (the accuracy is 5%) by assuming that stiffeners are only geometry constraints of simple specimens that don’t affect the crack growth resistance. It is worth stressing that no finite element analysis is used in this paper.