Abstract:

In studying the fracture of multi-phase materials and the structures composed of bonded dissimilar solids, special attention must be paid to the two classes of imperfections: one is the geometric discontinuities which may be idealized as cracks, and the other the material inhomogeneities which may be idealized as inclusions. In both cases the tips or ends of the defects are points of stress singularity and, consequently, sources of potential crack initiation and propagation. On this account, the problem of an elastic plane containing a crack and an arbitrarily oriented flat inclusion is considered in this paper. In the formulation of the problem, the Green's functions for a pair of dislocations and a pair of concentrated body forces are utilized to generate the crack and the inclusion respectively. By using the integral equations technique, the stress singularity powers at the tip or end and the intersection point of the crack and the inclusion are defined. Based on this, the formulas of calculating the stress intensity factors at the crack tip and the inclusion end are obtained.

Key words: crack, inclusion, stress intensity factor