The influence of viscoelasticity on crack front waves

It has recently proved possible to extend to viscoelasticity an analysis of the perturbation to the stress intensity factor induced by a slight perturbation from straight of the front of a propagating crack, In the present work, this extension is employed to assess the effect of viscoelasticity on crack front waves. The elastic result is recovered in the limit of high frequencies. The leading-order correction to the high-frequency limit is given explicitly, for the case of a Maxwell fluid. The basic perturbation analysis is also performed up to second order in the crack front deflection, to develop a governing equation for weakly-nonlinear crack front waves. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.