Preliminary Analysis

Following the thought processes above, and having constructed the model as shown in Figure , it remained to model the phenomenon of coalescence independently of the growth effect.

A few simplifying assumptions were made, regarding the phenomenon of coalescence, which may be summarised as follows:

• Coalescences were independent of each other;
• The probability of coalescence for a crack was independent of other cracks, given its location and global parameters;
• Coalescences were distributed throughout time, independent of each other.

Examination of the model described by Figure  shows that what was initially required was to model a rate of coalescence for the cracks. The number of coalescences since the previous interval is given in Table , for the 200kN set of data.

 
Table: Number of Coalescences since Last Time Point for the 200kN Data.