The Effect of a Stringer on the Stress in a Cracked Sheet

Abstract

An infinite stringer is assumed to be continuously attached to a sheet along a line perpendicular to a finite crack. At a great distance from the crack, the sheet is under a uniform tensile stress parallel to the stringer. The plane-stress solution for this problem is carried out by using the complex variable approach of Muskhelishvili to derive an integral equation which is then solved numerically on the IBM 7090 computer. In particular, the effect of the stringer on the strength of the stress singularity at the crack tip, and the maximum load-concentration factor in the stringer are found.