The crack problem for a circular cylinder shell embedded in nonlinear elastic medium

In this paper the Line-Spring model developed by Rice and Levy [1] is used to obtain an approximate solution for cracked circular cylindrical shell embedded in a nonlinear elastic medium. It is assumed that the shell contains a circumferential or external surface crack and is subjected to a uniform load. To formulate the shell problem, a Donnell type theory is used to account for the effects of the transverse deformations, and that were found from beam; plate problems having crack. The solutions are obtained for linear elastic medium and then for nonlinear elastic medium. The problem of linear elastic medium is solved using the well known normal mode, and by satisfying a set of boundary conditions, the complete displacement functions for the cracked circular cylinder is obtained. The perturbation method is used in case of nonlinear elastic medium. A parametric study is conducted to examine most of the factors affecting the solution such as crack position, effect of nonlinearity, effect of uniform pressure and effect of the shell thickness.