Size effects on quasistatic growth of fractures

Abstract

We perform an analysis of the size effect for quasistatic growth of fractures in linearly isotropic elastic bodies under antiplanar shear. In the framework of the variational model proposed by G.A. Francfort and J.-J. Marigo in [14], we prove that if the size of the body tends to infinity, and even if the surface energy is of cohesive form, under suitable boundary displacements the fracture propagates following the Griffith's functional.