THERMOELASTIC PROBLEM OF STEADY-STATE HEAT FLOW DISTURBED BY A CRACK PERPENDICULAR TO THE GRADED INTERFACIAL ZONE IN BONDED MATERIALS

The plane thermoelasticity equations are used to investigate the steady-state nonisothermal crack problem for bonded materials with a graded interfacial zone. The interfacial zone is modeled as a nonhomogeneous interlayer having continuously varying thermoelastic moduli in the exponential form between the dissimilar, homogeneous half-planes. A crack is assumed to exist in one of the half-planes oriented perpendicular to the nominal interface, disturbing a uniform heat flow. Based on the method of Fourier integral transform, formulation of the crack problem is reduced to solving two sets of Cauchy-type singular integral equations for temperature and thermal stress fields. The heat-flux intensity factors and the thermally induced mode II stress intensity factors are defined in order to characterize the singular behavior of temperature gradients and thermal stresses, respectively, in the vicinity of the crack tips. In the numerical results, the values of heat-flux and thermal-stress intensity factors are presented for various combinations of material and geometric parameters of the dissimilar media bonded through a thermoelastically graded interfacial zone. The influence of crack-surface partial conductance on the near-tip temperature and thermal stress fields is also addressed.