The hybrid crack-tip element approach to thermo-elastic crac

The stress intensity factors for a thermal crack problem are computed directly from the crack tip singular field as it was embedded in a specialized crack-tip element. The method gives accurate results without modeling a very refined mesh near the crack tip and without evaluating additional line and/or area integrals for the "modified" path independent integrals as suggested by most current methods for thermoelastic cracks. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.