INTERACTION OF NEWLY DEFINED STRESS INTENSITY FACTORS FOR ANGULAR CORNERS IN A ROW OF DIAMOND-SHAPED INCLUSIONS

This paper deals with a row of equally spaced equal diamond-shaped inc lusions with angular corners under various loading conditions. The pro blem is formulated as a system of singular integral equations with Cau chy-type singularities, where the unknown functions are the densities of body forces distributed in infinite plates having the same elastic constants of the matrix and inclusions. In order to analyze the proble ms accurately, the unknown functions of the body force densities are e xpressed as a linear combination of two types of fundamental density f unctions and power series, where the fundamental density functions are chosen to represent the symmetric stress singularity of 1/r(1-lambda 1) and the skew-symmetric stress singularity of 1/r(1-lambda 2). Then, newly defined stress intensity factors for angular corners are system atically calculated for various shapes, spacings, elastic constants an d numbers of the diamond-shaped inclusions in a plate subjected to uni axial tension, biaxial tension and in-plane shear. For all types of di amond-shaped inclusions, the stress intensity factor is shown to be li nearly related to the reciprocal of the number of diamond-shaped inclu sions.