Electroelastic interaction between a piezoelectric screw dislocation and a circular inhomogeneity with interfacial cracks

Abstract

A piezoelectric screw dislocation in the matrix interacting with a circular inhomogeneity with interfacial cracks under antiplane shear and in-plane electric loading at infinity was dealt with. Using complex variable method, a general solution to the problem was presented. For a typical case, the closed form expressions of complex potentials in the inhomogeneity and the matrix regions and the electroelastic field intensity factors were derived explicitly when the interface contains single crack. The image force acting on the piezoelectric screw dislocation was calculated by using the perturbation technique and the generalized Peach-Koehler formula. As a result, numerical analysis and discussion show that the perturbation influence of the interfacial crack on the interaction effects of the dislocation and the inhomogeneity is significant which indicates the presence of the interfacial crack will change the interaction mechanism when the length of the crack goes up to a critical value. It is also shown that soft inhomogeneity can repel the dislocation due to their intrinsic electromechanical coupling behavior.