The effect of surface stress on an interface crack in linearly elastic materials
Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids
Published online on May 20, 2014
Abstract
We consider an interface crack whose crack faces are coated with a thin reinforcing film of separate elastic material. We obtain asymptotic solutions, which, in the case of plane elasticity, demonstrate that the addition of the thin film effectively eliminates the well-known oscillatory behavior of the displacement and stress fields in the vicinity of the crack tip leading to a strong square-root stress singularity. In the case of anti-plane elasticity, the effect of the reinforcement is to reduce the order of the stress singularity at the crack tip. In addition, we demonstrate that the reinforcement induces a displacement field which is smooth locally and bounded at the crack tip.