Structural integrity assessment of plates containing embedded cracks - Part II: Developing guidance on using the limit load solutions

Highlights: • Assessment of off-set embedded cracks in plates under complex loading. • Effect of stress parallel to the crack plane considered. • New local limit load solution developed. • Global/local limit loads validated using FE J database via reference stress method. • Current R6 and BS7910 limit load/reference stress solutions validated. Available limit load solutions for plates containing embedded cracks in R6 and BS7910, a newly published global solution by Lv et al. and a new local solution recommended in this paper are validated via the reference stress J scheme using 612 finite element J cases (see Part I). The results show that the Lv et al. global limit load solution, the R6 global solution and the BS7910 reference stress solution can lead to good J predictions but the predictions may be non-conservative. A factor less than 1 should be applied to these limit load solutions to obtain conservative J predictions. The R6 local solutions may be non-conservative for bending stress dominated cases. The new local limit load solution developed in this paper is conservative for cases with weak bending stress and needs to apply a factor 0.7 for bending stress dominated cases. Recommendations for possible R6 update are provided.