Int J Adv Manuf Technol
DOI 10.1007/s00170-008-1872-z
SPECIAL ISSUE - ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Determination of J-integral and stress intensity factor using
the commercial FE software ABAQUS in austenitic stainless
steel (AISI 304) plates
G. Venkatachalam & R. Harichandran & S. Rajakumar &
C. Dharmaraja & C. Pandivelan
Received: 26 February 2008 / Accepted: 18 September 2008
# Springer-Verlag London Limited 2008
Abstract This paper presents J-integral and stress intensity
factor solutions for several crack configurations in plates.
The edge crack is considered for the analysis. The tensile
load is applied and the crack propagation is studied. The
finite element method is used to model the plate and mode I
stress intensity factors are evaluated. For solving the FE
model, commercial FE software ABAQUS is used. Several
cases including different thickness and crack lengths are
presented for not only linear elastic analysis but also for
elastic-plastic analysis. The 3-D model is taken for the
analysis and eight-noded brick element is used for FE mesh.
Keywords J-integral . Stress intensity factor .
Finite element method
1 Introduction
Fracture mechanics has reached the level of sophistication as
well as wide industrial acceptance such that many actual and
potential brittle failure problems can be dealt through this
G. Venkatachalam : C. Dharmaraja : C. Pandivelan
School of Mechanical & Building Sciences, VIT University,
Vellore 632014, India
R. Harichandran (*)
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Engineering College,
Kovilpatti 628503, India
e-mail: hari_chandra1984@yahoo.com
S. Rajakumar
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
SCAD College of Engineering,
Cheranmahadevi, Tirunelveli, India
discipline. The stress intensity factor (SIF) characterizes the
stresses, strains, and displacements near the crack tip. If the
plastic zone near the crack tip is large, then the SIF no longer
characterizes the crack tip conditions. So calculation of SIF
is limited to linear elastic fracture mechanics. When the
plastic zone is large or non-linear material behavior becomes
significant, one should discard SIF and crack tip parameters
(either J-integral or CTOD) that takes larger plastic zone
near the crack tip and non-linear material behavior into
account. Here, an attempt is made to find out J-integral.
The T-stress is increasingly being recognized as an
important additional stress field characterizing parameter
in the analyses of cracked bodies. The elastic T-stress
represents the stress-acting parallel to the crack plane. It is
known that the sign and magnitude of T-stress can
substantially alter the level of crack tip stress triaxiality.
2 Literature review
Rice [1] applied the deformation plasticity to the analysis of
a crack in a non-linear material. He showed that the non-
energy release rate J could be written as a path-independent
line integral. Rice and Rosengren [2] showed that J
uniquely characterizes crack tip stresses and strains in
non-linear materials. Kobayashi et al. [3] used finite
element analysis to determine numerically Rice’s J-integral
values in centrally notched plates of 43.40 steel. For
increasing level of loading, the rate of increase in J-integral
decreases and J-integral remains almost constant at when
the load is at yield point under such crack extension.
Courtin et al. [4] applied the crack opening displacement
extrapolation method and the J-integral approach in 2D and
3D ABAQUS finite element models. The results obtained
by them are in good agreement with those found in the
 Int J Adv Manuf Technol

a (mm)
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
0

-5

-10

J (J/Sq.m)
-15

-20

-25

-30

-35
Elastic Elastic-Plastic
Fig. 1 Edge-crack model
Fig. 4 a vs. J

a (mm)
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
1200

1000

800
K1c (MPa/√mm)

600

400

200

0
Fig. 2 Close view of crack
-200

Fig. 5 a vs. K1c

a (mm)
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
100
50
0
T Stress (MPa)

-50
-100
-150
-200
-250
-300
-350

Fig. 3 FE mesh of model Fig. 6 a vs. T-stress

Int J Adv Manuf Technol

t (mm) Load (N)

3 4 5 6 7 100 150 200 250 300 325 350
-20 0
-21 -20

J (J/Sq.M)
-22 -40
J (J/Sq.m)

-23 -60

-24 -80

-25 elastic elastic - plastic

elastic RI elastic-palstic RI
-26
Fig. 10 F vs. J
Elastic Elastic-Plastic

Fig. 7 t vs. J

t (mm) Load (N)

3 4 5 6 7 100 150 200 250 300 350
3000 800
700
2500
600
K 1 c ( M P a / √m m )
K1c (MPa/m m )

2000 500

1500 400
300
1000
200
500 100

0 0

Fig. 8 t vs. K1c Fig. 11 F vs. K1c

t (mm) Load (N)

3 4 5 6 7 100 150 200 250 300 350
600
80
400 70
200
T Stress (MPa)

60
T Stress (MPa)

0 50
-200 40
-400 30
-600 20
-800 10
-1000 0

Fig. 9 t vs. T-stress Fig. 12 F vs. T-stress


literature. Nevertheless, since the knowledge of the field
near the crack tip is not required in the energetic method, the
J-integral calculations seem to be a good technique to deal
with the fatigue growth of general cracks. Rajaram et al.
[5] presented an approach to obtain fracture mechanics
singularity strength (J, K1, etc.) along a 3D crack-front
using tetrahedral elements. Hocine et al. [6] determined the
energy parameter J for rubber-like materials. Owen and
Fawkes [7] developed many numerical methods using finite
element analysis to obtain SIF values.
3 Finite element analysis
The edge-crack model shown in Fig. 1 is taken for the
analysis. The Fig. 2 shows the close view of crack. The tensile
load distributed in nature is applied at the top of the plate and
the bottom face is constrained. The material taken for our
analysis is Austenitic stainless steel (AISI 304). Figure 3
shows the finite element mesh of the model. The eight-node
linear brick elements (C3D8 in ABAQUS) with three degrees
of freedom at each node are considered. An attempt is also
made with reduced integration. Reduced integration uses a
lower-order integration to form the element stiffness. It
reduces running time, especially in three dimensions. There
are 375 nodes and 224 elements are used in the model.
4 Results and discussions
This paper is basically dealing three kind of analysis. The
variations of J-integral, T-stress and SIF with respect to crack
length (a), thickness of model (t) and load (F) conditions are
studied. In all the cases, one parameter is varied and other
two parameters are kept constant. For a constant load and
thickness, the increase in the value of J-integral for both
elastic and elastic-plastic is same up to the elastic limit which
is shown in the Fig. 4. After elastic limit, there is no
appreciable increase in the value of J-integral for the elastic
analysis. Figure 5 shows that the increase in t for elastic has
no influence on the value of J-integral whereas it is linear in
the case of elastic-plastic. The variation of J with load is also
studied (Fig. 6). Here, the values of J are compared with
reduced integration. Until the elastic limit, there is no
variation for all cases; but when the load goes beyond the
elastic limit, decrease in the value of J for elastic-plastic is
more than that of elastic. In elastic analysis, elements with
reduced integration have no influence where as in elastic-
plastic, it matters. Figure 7 shows that the SIF decreases
initially when a increases; but there is no significant decrease
in SIF for further increase in a. SIF linearly increases with
respect to t and F (Figs. 8 and 9). The T-stress distribution is
highly turbulent for both different crack lengths and different
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
thickness which are shown in Figs. 10 and 11. But the same
is linear when a and t are kept constant (Fig. 12).
Constant F and t
a vs. J (Fig. 4).
a vs. K1c (Fig. 5).
a vs. T-stress (Fig. 6).
Constant F and a
t vs. J (Fig. 7).
t vs. K1c (Fig. 8).
t vs. T-stress (Fig. 9).
Constant a and t
F vs. J (Fig. 10).
F vs. K1c (Fig. 11).
F vs. T-stress (Fig. 12).
5 Conclusion
Finite element model is created to find the fracture
properties of Austenite stainless steel (AISI 304). The FE
analysis was carried out by FEA commercial software
ABAQUS. Fracture properties of edge-crack plate with
tensile load are studied. SIF and T-stress are found out for
elastic limit where as J-integral is found out for both elastic
and elastic-plastic models. It is found that there is a
considerable change in the value of J-integral in when the
load crosses elastic limit.
References
1. Rice JR (1968) A path independent integral and the approximate
analysis of strain concentration by notches and cracks. J Appl Mech
35:379–386
2. Rice JR, Rosengren GF (1968) Plane strain deformation near a crack
tip in a power law hardening material. J Mech Phys Solids 16:1–12
3. Kobayashi AS, Chiu ST, Beeuwkes R (1973) A numerical and
experimental investigation on the use of J-integral. J Appl Mech
15:293–305
4. Courtina S, Gardina C, Bezinea G, Ben Hadj Hamoudab H (2005)
Advantages of the J-integral approach for calculating stress
intensity factors when using the commercial finite element software
ABAQUS. Eng Fract Mech 72:2174–2185
5. Rajaram H, Socrate S, Parks DM (2000) Application of domain
integral methods using tetrahedral elements to the determination of
stress intensity factors. Eng Fract Mech 66(5):455–482
6. Ait Hocine N, Nait Abdelaziz M, Ghfiri H, Mesmacque G (1996)
Evaluation of the energy parameter J on rubber-like materials:
comparison between experimental and numerical results. Eng Fract
Mech 55(6):919–933
7. Owen DRJ, Fawkes AJ (1983) Engineering fracture mechanics:
numerical methods and applications. Pineridge, Swansea, UK