Boundary element analysis of interface cracks

A new boundary element formulation is developed to determine the complex stress intensity factors associated with cracks on the interface between dissimilar materials. This represents an extension of the methodology developed previously by the authors for determination of free-edge generalized stress intensity factors on bimaterial interfaces, which employs displacements and weighted tractions as primary variables. However, in the present work, the characteristic oscillating stress singularity is addressed through the introduction of modified weighting functions and corresponding numerical quadrature formulas. As a result, this boundary-only approach provides extremely accurate mesh-independent solutions for a range of interface crack problems. A number of computational examples are considered to assess the performance of the method in comparison with analytical solutions and previous work on the subject.