Three-dimensional stress singularity at a bimaterial interface crack front

Abstract An eigenfunction expansion method is developed to obtain three-dimensional asymptotic stress fields in the vicinity of the front of a semi-infinite crack along a bimaterial interface of a plate subjected to far-field extension and bending. In comparison with the existing method, the present method is considerably easier to implement, and is also computationally more efficient in the sense that it does not need to resort to iterative schemes to solve the system of three coupled partial differential equations of three-dimensional elasticity theory. Explicit expressions for singular stress fields in the neighborhood of the front of a semi-infinite crack along a bimaterial interface are derived in the paper.