Abstract

The feeling of “lost in translation” is familiar to everyone who stumbles on a relevant literature source written by someone with a different academic background. It may take a significant effort to “translate” the source and interpret its contents into a familiar “language.” This may happen in various research areas and analysis of crack problems is one of such examples.   The methods of analytical or computational crack modelling vary with the academic background of the researcher and with specific applications. In addition, as typically happens in scientific research, the developments in the relevant areas take place simultaneously in different countries, and the results are literally described and published in different languages. Some of those publications are not even translated. The talk examines major techniques for modelling elastostatic crack problems. The foundations of these techniques and fundamental papers that introduced, developed, and applied them are reviewed. The goal is to provide “translation” between different academic languages that describe the same problem.