Generalized stroh formalism for anisotropic elasticity for general boundary conditions

Abstract

The Stroh formalism is most elegant when the boundary conditions are simple, namely, they are prescribed in terms of traction or displacement. For mixed boundary conditions such as there for a slippery boundary, the concise matrix expressions of the Stroh formalism are destroyed. We present a generalized Stroh formalism which is applicable to a class of general boundary conditions. The general boundary conditions include the simple and slippery boundary conditions as special cases. For Green's functions for the half space, the general solution is applicable to the case when the surface of the half-space is a fixed, a free, a slippery, or other more general boundary. For the Griffith crack in the infinite space, the crack can be a slit-like crack with free surfaces, a rigid line inclusion (which is sometimes called an anticrack), or a rigid line with slippery surface or with other general surface conditions. It is worth mention that the modifications required on the Stroh formalism are minor. The generalized formalism and the final solutions look very similar to those of unmodified version. Yet the results are applicable to a rather wide range of boundary conditions.