A hydrodynamic analogy to the crack driving force

Students often have a tough time understanding the crack driving force in an elementary course on fracture mechanics.

A recent free access article has been published on a fluid analogy to the crack driving force and the Riabouchinsky free streamline problem for ideal fluid flow around two plates.  Hopefully this analogy can aid in the visualization.

The URL where this article can be downloaded is found at 10.1515/jmbm-2019-0011