Line-integral representations of the displacement and stress fields due to an arbitrary Volterra dislocation loop in a transversely isotropic elastic full space

Abstract

Transversely isotropic materials or hexagonal crystals are commonly utilized in various engineering fields; however, dislocation solutions for such special materials have not been fully developed. In this paper, we present a comprehensive study on this important topic, where only Volterra dislocations of the translational type are considered. Based on the potential theory of linear elasticity, we extend the well-known Burgers displacement equation for an arbitrarily shaped dislocation loop in an isotropic elastic full space to the transversely isotropic case. Both the induced displacements and stresses are expressed uniformly in terms of simple and explicit line integrals along the dislocation loop. We introduce three quasi solid angles to describe the displacement discontinuities over the dislocation surface and extract a simple step function out of these angles to characterize the dependence of the displacements on the configuration of the dislocation surface. We also give a new explicit formula for calculating accurately and efficiently the traditional solid angle of an arbitrary polygonal dislocation loop. From the present line-integral representations, exact closed-form solutions in terms of elementary functions are further obtained in a unified way for the displacement and stress fields due to a straight dislocation segment of arbitrary orientation. The non-uniqueness of the elastic field solution due to an open dislocation segment is rigorously discussed and demonstrated. For a circular dislocation loop parallel to the plane of isotropy, a new explicit expression of the induced elastic field is presented in terms of complete elliptic integrals. Several numerical examples are also provided as illustration and verification of the derived dislocation solutions, which further show the importance of material anisotropy on the dislocation-induced elastic field, and reveal the non-uniqueness feature of the elastic field due to a straight dislocation segment.