Thermal Stresses Due to a Plane Crack in General Anisotropic Material

Abstract

A solution is given for the thermoelastic stress field due to the obstruction of a uniform heat flux by a plane crack in a generally anisotropic body. A Green’s function formulation is used to reduce the problem to a set of singular integral equations which are solved in closed form. When the crack is assumed to be traction free, the crack opening displacement is found to be negative over one half of the crack unless a sufficiently large far field tensile stress is superposed. The problem is, therefore, reformulated assuming a contact zone at one crack tip. The extent of this zone and the stress intensity factors in all three modes at each crack tip are obtained as functions of the applied stress and heat flux.