Wikipedia
The J- integral represents a way to calculate the strain energy release rate, or work ( energy) per unit fracture surface area, in a material. The theoretical concept of J-integral was developed in 1967 by Cherepanov and in 1968 by Jim Rice independently, who showed that an energetic contour path integral (called J) was independent of the path around a crack.
Later, experimental methods were developed, which allowed measurement of critical fracture properties using laboratory-scale specimens for materials in which sample sizes are too small and for which the assumptions of Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) do not hold, and to infer a critical value of fracture energy J. The quantity J defines the point at which large-scale plastic yielding during propagation takes place under mode one loading.
The J-integral is equal to the strain energy release rate for a crack in a body subjected to monotonic loading. This is generally true, under quasistatic conditions, only for linear elastic materials. For materials that experience small-scale yielding at the crack tip, J can be used to compute the energy release rate under special circumstances such as monotonic loading in mode III ( antiplane shear). The strain energy release rate can also be computed from J for pure power-law hardening plastic materials that undergo small-scale yielding at the crack tip.
The quantity J is not path-independent for monotonic mode I and mode II loading of elastic-plastic materials, so only a contour very close to the crack tip gives the energy release rate. Also, Rice showed that J is path-independent in plastic materials when there is no non- proportional loading. Unloading is a special case of this, but non-proportional plastic loading also invalidates the path-independence. Such non-proportional loading is the reason for the path-dependence for the in-plane loading modes on elastic-plastic materials.