Thermoelastic analysis for an opening crack in an orthotropic material

The thermoelastic analysis of an opening crack embedded in an orthotropic material is made under applied uniform heat flux and mechanical loadings. To simulate the case of an opening crack filled with a medium, a thermal-medium crack model is proposed. The thermally permeable and impermeable cracks are the limiting ones of the proposed thermal-medium one. The crack-tip thermoelastic fields induced by a crack in an orthotropic material are determined in closed forms. The elastic T-stress can be also obtained explicitly. The effects of applied mechanical loadings and the thermal conductivity of crack interior on the heat flux at the crack surfaces and the mode-II stress intensity factor are investigated through numerical computations. The obtained results reveal that an increase of the thermal conductivity of crack interior decreases the mode-II stress intensity factor. And when an applied mechanical loading is increasing, the mode-II stress intensity factor is rising.