Abstract: An energy difference rate method (EDRM) is applied to establish a closed form solution (CFS) about stress intensity factor (SIF) of three dimensional finite bodies containing inclined embedded cracks. According to EDRM, two dimensional results of SIF can be utilized sufficiently to solve the three dimensional problems of SIF. The results given by this method agree with the generally recognized ones satisfactorily when the cases degenerate into symmetric ones. Furthermore, systematical results of three dimensional SIF can be obtained by EDRM with high computational efficiency.

Key words: inclined embedded crack, three dimensional finite boby, energy difference rate stress intensity factor, closed form solution.