Stress singularities of partially-constrained interface cracks in anisotropic composites

The eigenvalue problem of a multimaterial wedge composed of several generally anisotropic elastic sectors is formulated, and an explicit procedure is given for obtaining the eigensolutions. The analysis is applied to a bimaterial wedge containing an interface crack. The boundary conditions of a traction-free crack are replaced by various assumptions which define sliding, floating and compliant interface cracks. Elasticity solutions are obtained for some of the new models by using an eigenseris based on boundary collocation. Some of the sliding cracks and all floating cracks have no complex eigenvalues. Hence the elasticity solutions do not show pathological oscillatory behavior and the stress intensity factors do not depend on the choice of an arbitrary reference length scale.