Stress intensity factors around a crack in a nonhomogeneous interfacial layer between two dissimilar elastic half-planes

The stresses around a crack in an interfacial layer between two dissimilar elastic half-planes are obtained. The crack is parallel to the interfaces. The material constants of the layer vary continuously within a range from those of the upper half-plane to those of the lower half-plane. An internal gas pressure is applied to the surfaces of the crack. To derive the solution, the nonhomogeneous interfacial layer is divided into several homogeneous layers with different material properties. The boundary conditions are reduced to dual integral equations, which are solved by expanding the differences of the crack face displacements into a series. The unknown coefficients in the series are determined using the Schmidt method, and a stress intensity factor is calculated numerically for epoxy-aluminum composites.