Analysis of an interfacial crack in a piezoelectric bi-material via the extended Green's functions and displacement discontinuity method

Based on the extended Stroh formalism, we first derive the extended Green's functions for an extended dislocation and displacement discontinuity located at the interface of a piezoelectric bi-material. These include Green's functions of the extended dislocation, displacement discontinuities within a finite interval and the concentrated displacement discontinuities, all on the interface. The Green's functions are then applied to obtain the integro-differential equation governing the interfacial crack. To eliminate the oscillating singularities associated with the delta function in the Green's functions, we represent the delta function in terms of the Gaussian distribution function. In so doing, the integro-differential equation is reduced to a standard integral equation for the interfacial crack problem in piezoelectric bi-material with the extended displacement discontinuities being the unknowns. A simple numerical approach is also proposed to solve the integral equation for the displacement discontinuities, along with the asymptotic expressions of the extended intensity factors and J-integral in terms of the discontinuities near the crack tip. In numerical examples, the effect of the Gaussian parameter on the numerical results is discussed, and the influence of different extended loadings on the interfacial crack behaviors is further investigated. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.