Thermoelastic solutions for anisotropic cracked thin films

Thermal stress intensity factors for cracks in anisotropic thin films subjected to uniform heat fluxes are investigated. Based on the method of analytic continuation associated with the alternating technique, the general solution of an anisotropic thin film/substrate under thermal loading is derived. Rapidly convergent series solutions for both the temperature and stress fields are obtained in terms of the corresponding homogeneous potentials. Using the technique of superposition and the Cauchy integral, the solution of the crack problem with arbitrary locations and angles is solved. Some typically numerical results are discussed, showing that a stiffer substrate can efficiently reduce the thermal stress intensity factors of the cracked thin films. The result also shows that the solution is accurate and rapidly converges as the thin film/substrate degenerates to a homogeneous medium.