Two illustrations of rapid crack growth in a pre-stressed compressible neo-Hookean material

An unbounded isotropic compressible neo-Hookean solid is initially in equilibrium under uniform tensile (possibly large) pre-stress. In one case, plane strain conditions generate slit crack growth at a constant sub-critical rate; in the other, axial symmetry produces penny-shaped crack growth. The procedure of superposing infinitesimal deformations upon those that are large is carried out in terms of tractable exact full-field solutions. These solutions are examined apart from a specific fracture mechanics model, nevertheless, they show that pre-stress induces, in addition to the expected anisotropy, a critical value above which a negative Poisson effect occurs. It is also found that dilatational, rotational and Rayleigh wave speeds decrease, and that the decrease is greater for the plane strain state associated with slit crack growth than for the axially symmetric state of the penny-shaped crack. Dynamic stress intensity factors are also extracted, and found to fall below those for a linear isotropic solid at the same pre-stress and crack growth rate. Moreover, the range of growth rates for sub-critical crack propagation is also decreased.