A stress and displacement discontinuity element method for elastic transversely anisotropic rock.

SUMMARY The paper presents closed-form solutions for stress and displacement influence functions for stress discontinuity (SD) and displacement discontinuity (DD) elements, for a two-dimensional plane-strain elastic, transversely anisotropic medium. The solutions for SD elements are based on Kelvin's problem and for DD elements on the concept of dipoles. Stress and displacement influence functions are derived for the following elements: constant SD, linear SD, constant DD, linear DD, square root DD, parabolic DD, constant DD surface, and linear DD surface elements. The formulations are incorporated into FROCK, a hybridized boundary element method code, and are validated by providing comparisons between the results from FROCK and the finite element code ABAQUS. A limited parametric analysis shows the effects of slight anisotropy on the stress field around the tip of a crack and of the orientation of the crack with respect to the axes of elastic symmetry. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]