Thermal stresses and fracture of thin plates during cutting and welding operations

In many technological processes involving cutting or welding of thin plates there is local thermal heating or cooling at the tip of the cut by a thermal source. In this paper we analytically investigate the stress distribution induced by the point thermal source moving with a constant velocity across an infinite elastic plate. Stress intensity factor for the cut formed by the moving thermal source is calculated. It is shown that for welding the value of the stress intensity factor due to thermal stresses induced by the thermal source is equal to zero. For cutting in the case of positive values of the power of thermal source the stress intensity factors will be negative. This means that the thermal field induced by the point thermal heat source will tend to close the cut in the vicinity of the tip. The opposite situation occurs when the cut tip is cooled by the thermal source. As an example, the theory under development is shown when applied to some strength issues of thermal beam cutting of brittle materials.