UNIFORM HEAT-FLOW DISTURBED BY AN ELLIPTIC RIGID INCLUSION EMBEDDED IN AN ANISOTROPIC ELASTIC MATRIX

For uniform heat flow disturbed by an insulated elliptical rigid inclusion embedded in an anisotropic elastic matrix, the field solutions are derived in this article by applying the extended version of Stroh's formalism for plane anisotropic thermoelasticity. The thermal stresses along the interface between the inclusion and matrix are obtained explicitly. By letting the minor axis of the ellipse approach zero, the solutions for the rigid line inclusion are derived. The strength of thermal stress singularity is defined in a similar way to the stress intensity factor of crack problems and is found to be dependent on the material properties. Comparison is made for the cases of isotropic materials and the results are in good agreement. The effect of flow direction on the thermal stress is discussed, based upon numerical solution for the fiber reinforced composite Graphite/Epoxy AS/3501.