  This research article presents stress distribution and fracture analysis of a
cantilever beam considering both continuum and lumped distribution of gravity
force. Airy stress function is used to derive two-dimensional stress
distribution using power series and boundary conditions. It is concluded that
bending stress is the most dominant over other two stresses. However, variation
of vertical normal stress does not match between the two systems owing to
change in load distribution. Moreover, an expression for energy release rate is
also derived by assuming that a crack is present at the top of fixed end of
beam and propagates vertically down to result in catastrophic failure. Finally,
these results are validated with finite element simulations as well.
