Anti-plane stress state of a plate with a V-notch for a new class of elastic solids

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the efficacy and usefulness of a class of recently proposed models that could be reasonable candidates for describing the response of brittle elastic materials. The class of models that are considered allows for a non-linear relationship between the linearized elastic strain and the Cauchy stress, and this allows one to describe situations wherein the stress increases while the strain yet remains small. Thus one would be in a position to model the response of brittle elastic bodies in the neighborhood of the tips of cracks and notches. In this paper we study the behavior of such models in a plate with a V-notch subject to a state of anti-plane stress. This geometrical simplification enables us to characterize the governing equation for the problem by means of the Airy stress function, though the constitutive relation is a non-linear relation between the linearized strain and the stress. We study the problem numerically by appealing to the finite element method. We find that the numerical solutions are stable. We are able to provide some information regarding the nature of the solution near the tip of the V-notch. In particular we find stress concentration in the vicinity of the singularity.