CRACK-INCLUSION INTERACTION BY HYBRID DISLOCATION-BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

Abstract

Adding particles or fibres into a matrix is a common method of improving the material properties of materials and is widely adopted in the composite materials industry, building construction, and others. It is not unusual for the added particles or fibres to influence the properties of the matrix material. The primary objective of the present work is to study the fracture behaviour of such materials, in particular the interaction between the matrix material and the added inclusions. In the present study, a theoretical and computationally efficient numerical method is developed to analyse the interaction effect between the cracks and inclusions. The method of analysis is based on singular integral techniques using distributions of edge dislocations to represent the crack and using distributions of point forces to represent the interaction on the interface of matrix and inclusions. The stress intensity factors of the cracks are presented for a variety of configurations. Numerical results are compared with available data in the literature and are found to be in very good agreement. The method is extended to study the interaction between one crack with one inclusion; one crack with two inclusions; and two cracks with one inclusion. These results would be useful in material design and failure prediction.