Crack Driving Force in Anisotropic Media due to Non-Elastic Deformation

In this paper elastic stress field in an elliptic inhomogeneity embedded in orthotropic media due to non-elastic deformation is determined by the complex function method and the principle of minimum strain energy. Two complex parameters are expressed in a general form, which covers all characterizations of the degree of anisotropy for any ideal orthotropic elastic body. The stress acting on the long side of ellipse can be considered as a crack driving force and applied in failure and fatigue analysis of composites. For some special cases, the resulting solutions will reduce to the known results.