Interaction between Cracks Perpendicular to and on the Interface in Composite Materials

This paper solves a plane elasto-static problem for two bonded elastic and isotropic strips with a T-shaped crack. The T-shaped crack consists of a crack perpendicular to the interface and an interface crack. By means of the Airy stresss function and Fourier transforms the problem is formulated as a system of integral equations. A new numerical method using only the Gauss-Chebyshev integral formula is proposed to evaluate the integral equations, though the complicated Jacobi polynomials expansion and integral formula were used in the previous literature. Stress intensity factors are obtained numerically for various material and geometrical parameters, where the interaction between the cracks perpendicular to and on the interface is clearly shown.