Conservation laws and prediction methods for stress concentration fields

Starting with the Eshelby-type conservation law, path-independent line and surface integrals that allow the comparison of averaged strain-energy densities in the notch area for linear elastic and non-linear elastic material behaviors are derived. The analysis shows that a point (two-dimensional problems) and a curve (three-dimensional problems) exist on the notch boundary, where the values of the strain-energy densities are almost the same. The conditions are discussed, for which the equality of the strain energies is guaranteed. The theoretical results are illustrated by two finite-element examples.