STRESS FIELD IN AN ELASTIC PLATE WITH MULTIPLE CRACKS We will use Kachanov’s approximate method to analyze stresses in an elastic plate containing multiple cracks. 1. PERIODIC ARRAY OF CRACKS

In this section, we want to model a surface with flaws. We model it as a line from which N parallel cracks progress into the 2D material (see Fig. 2). The ensemble of cracks is submitted to a remote mode I loading p∞ as sketched in Fig. 2, but, because of the interactions between the cracks, each crack i (i = 1, ...N) is submitted locally to both a normal traction pi(x) and a shear traction ti(x).