Abstract
This paper briefly describes the new engineering method, called the enhanced reference stress method, to estimate J (or $C^*$) for non-linear fracture mechanics analysis of defective components, recently proposed by authors. The proposed method offers significant advantages over existing methods in terms of its accuracy, simplicity and robustness. Examples of application of the proposed method to typical piping integrity problems such as through-wall cracked pipes under combined loading, and surface cracked pipes under internal pressure and bending are given. Excellent agreements between the FE J and $C^*$ results and those of the proposed method provide sufficient confidence in the use of the proposed method. One notable point is that the proposed method can be used to estimate J (or $C^*$) along the crack front of surface cracks. Moreover simplicity of the proposed method makes it easy to extend to more complex problems. Thus the proposed method is attractive to assess the significance of defects under practical situations.
