Effect of boundary conditions on the interfacial fracture behavior: Circular arc antiplane crack model for an annular sector bilayer plate

• An arc-shaped interface crack in an annular sector bilayer plate is studied.
• Sixteen frequently encountered boundary conditions are analyzed to discuss the edges effect.
• Four other fracture model are given to validate the present theory and numerical analysis.
• There exists a coupled effect of geometrical and physical factors on interfacial fracture behavior.
• The roles of various factors depend on the selection of circumferential edges.

In this paper, the problem of an arc-shaped interface crack in an annular sector bilayer plate under axial shear loading is analyzed. By considering sixteen frequently encountered boundary conditions, the Fourier transform method is used to reduce the mixed boundary value problem to a singular integral equation associated with a mode-III crack, from which the stress intensity factors are obtained numerically by the Lobatto–Chebyshev quadrature technique. To demonstrate the computational accuracy of the present method, convergence and validation studies are carried out. The computational results of stress intensity factors show that there exists a coupled effect between geometrical and physical parameters on the interfacial fracture behavior clearly, and the effect of the stiffness ratio on the interfacial fracture behavior depends on the selection of the circumferential edges.