Fracture of a Three-Layer Material with an Opening Mode Central Crack

This paper describes a problem of the theory of elasticity for a three-layer material in which two layers located symmetrically relative to the central layer have identical properties. The central layer has an opening mode crack whose tops are located in the neighboring layers. The solution of this problem is reduced to solving a system of Fredholm integral equations of the second kind. A stress intensity factor for opening mode cracks is determined, and its dependence on the problem parameters is investigated.