ABSTRACT
Abstract The cohesive zone description, characterised by a material specific decreasing stress (p) versus increasing crack face opening (v) relationship for the cohesive zone, plays a prominent role in the quantification of the fracture of an elastic softening material. This paper focusses on the general piece-wise softening law for which ρ = p c for Ο < ν < v c , ρ = qp c for Xv c < ν < v c and ρ = 0 for ν > v c , where the choice of λ and q allows a wide range of softening behaviours to be investigated in a relatively simple analytical way. A particularly simple degenerate form is that for which there is a non-zero stress intensity K I C at the crack tip followed by a constant stress p j = qp c within the cohesive zone.
