Thermal stress intensity factor for an edge crack in orthotropic composite media

The purpose of this article is to determine the thermal stress intensity factor (SIF) of an edge crack situated in an orthotropic strip of finite thickness h bonded to an orthotropic half plane, under thermal and mechanical loadings. The problem is reduced to a singular integral equation of the first kind. The integral equation is converted to a pair of the singular integral equations using asymptotic expansion method. The analytical expression of the stress intensity factor at the edge crack tip is found for concentrated point loading. The numerical values of SIF are computed for different point loading for various crack lengths and different ratios of thermal conductivities for different particular cases when the composite orthotropic material is the mixture of Steel-Myler and E-Glass epoxy. The significant feature of the article is the pictorial presentations of the variations of SIF due to the effect of ratios of thermal conductivities of both the materials.