ANTIPLANE DEFORMATION OF A PERIODICALLY LAYERED COMPOSITE WITH A CRACK, A NON-HOMOGENIZATION APPROACH

Fracture behaviour of an infinite periodically layered composite body, with a Mode 3 crack parallel to the layering, is investigated. Upon d eriving the Green function for a dislocation in a layered space, the p roblem is reduced to a singular integral equation of the first kind. T he specific case of the bimaterial multilayered composite is considere d in detail. The numerical results obtained for the stress intensity f actor allows one to estimate the accuracy of the known approximate mod els with a reduced number of layers. II is found that for certain para meter combinations the stress intensity factor for the interface crack may exceed the corresponding value for a crack in a homogeneous space . (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.