Limit Load Analysis for Plates with Elliptical Corner Cracks at Hole under Combined Tension and Bending Loads

A global limit load solution is derived for plates with elliptical corner cracks at a hole under combined tension and bending loads,based on the net-section collapse principle.The limit load solution is compared with the results of elastic-plastic finite element analysis for the plates with elliptical corner cracks at a hole for different crack sizes,a/t = 0.2,0.4,0.6,0.8,a/c = 1.0,0.4,0.2 and different loads,λ = 0,0.25,1,∞.The results show that the analytical solutions of the global limit load are conservative and close to the elastic-plastic FE results.The maximum difference between the analytical solutions and the FEA results is less than 20%.