Stress intensity factors of interface corners

Abstract

Stress singularity usually occurs near the interface corners, which may initiate failure of structures. Although several detailed studies have been done about the determination of their associated singular orders and stress intensity factors, very few failure criteria for general interface corners were successfully established based upon these parameters. Even the cracks in homogeneous media or the cracks lying along the interface between dissimilar materials are the special cases of the interface corners, the definitions of stress intensity factors proposed in the literature are usually not consistent with that of cracks. Thus, to have a universal failure criterion for the homogeneous cracks, interface cracks and interface corners, a unified definition for the stress intensity factors is indispensable. Moreover, according to the experience of crack problems, finding a stable and accurate approach to calculate the stress intensity factors is also important. Based upon the analytical solutions obtained previously for the multibonded anisotropic wedges and the well-known path-independent H-integral, in this paper we provide a unified definition and a stable computing approach for the stress intensity factors of interface corners.