Analysis of a circular arc-crack in thermoelectric media

The plane problem of a circular-arc crack in an infinite thermoelectric medium under remote thermal-electric loads is studied in this paper. The crack surface boundary conditions are assumed to be electrically and thermally impermeable. The explicit solutions are presented based on the complex variable method. Expressions for the electric flux, energy flux, thermal flux, and temperature and stress fields are derived. It is found that these fields exhibit traditional square-root singularity at the crack tip. Then the electric flux, the energy flux and stress intensity factors at the crack tip are obtained. The results show that the electric flux intensity factor and the energy flux intensity factor depend on the far-field electric flux loads and the applied total energy flux loads, respectively. In addition, the simultaneous existence of mode-I and mode-II stress intensity factors are found to be dependent on the angle of electric flux, the electric conductivity, the angle of thermal flux, the thermal conductivity, the central angle of the crack and thermal-elastic isotropy.