Magnetoelastic formulation of soft ferromagnetic elastic problems with collinear cracks: energy density fracture criterion

Magnetoelasticity is applied to solve collinear crack problems for soft ferromagnetic materials in two dimension. Complex functions are used for reducing the problem to the solution of a system of singular integral equations. The energy density factors are derived for determining how an off-axis magnetic field without mechanical load would influence the direction of crack initiation. The critical conditions are also determined for the case when both magnetic and mechanical load are present. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.