Energy dissipation and contour integral characterizing fracture behavior of incremental plasticity

Jep -integral is derived for characterizing the frac- ture behavior of elastic-plastic materials. The J ep -integral differs from Rice’s J-integral in that the free energy density rather than the stress working density is employed to define energy-momentum tensor. The J ep -integral is proved to be path-dependent regardless of incremental plasticity and deformation plasticity. The J epintegral possesses clearly clear physical meaning: (1) the value J ep tip evaluated on the infinitely small contour surrounding the crack tip represents the crack tip energy dissipation; (2) when the global steadystate crack growth condition is approached, the value of J ep farss calculated along the boundary contour equals to the sum of crack tip dissipation and bulk dissipation of plastic zone. The theoretical results are verified by simulating mode I crack problems.