Energy minimizing brittle crack propagation II

The paper is devoted to the study of quasi-static brittle crack evolution. We work under the following assumptions: a linear elastic body, with or without initial cracks inside, evolves in a quasi-static manner under an imposed path of boundary displacements. During its evolution cracks with unprescribed geometry may appear and/or grow. This is an alternative version of the published article [Bu3], containing an improved Mumford-Shah model based on the functional K2, a generalization of the integral J of Rice. Further information at http://irmi.epfl.ch/cag/buliga_bfrac.html or http://www.imar.ro/~marius/ .