Semi-analytical study on elastic field of two joined dissimilar materials with interfacial cracks under prescribed loading

Existing interfacial cracks in two joined dissimilar materials play a crucial role in determining the stress concentration and its further propagation, which severely affects the interfacial strength of the bi-materials, even leading to its debonding failure under external loading. This study proposes a semi-analytical method (SAM) to analyze the elastic field of two joined dissimilar materials with interfacial cracks. One of the two dissimilar materials is treated as an inhomogeneity having different material properties from the other and the crack is regarded as a line inhomogeneity whose elastic modulus equals to zero, hence the problem for the two joined dissimilar materials with an interfacial crack is converted to a homogeneous half space material problem with the assistance of the well-known Eshelby equivalent inclusion method (EIM). The results obtained with the SAM agree very well with those with the finite element method (FEM), providing a verification for the proposed method. Cases studies are conducted to explore the influences of the material mismatch, the length and the depth of the crack, the friction coefficient and the loading location on the elastic field of the two joined dissimilar materials, demonstrating that this work has potential in the analysis of joined dissimilar materials with interfacial cracks.