Abstract
The faces of a shear crack in a linear elastic solid under constant shear stress at infinity remain flat, do not open and are stress free. If the crack is located along the interface between two materials with different elastic constants, the situation becomes more complicated. Now pure shear loading will generate both mode II and mode I stress and displacement fields, characterized by the presence of both stress intensity factors KI~ and K I [i]. K I can be either positive (separation) or, under the hypothesis that the crack faces do not interfere, it can be negative (interpenetration). A negative mode I stress intensity factor has no physical significance, and here it is used in a virtual way. For an ordinary shear crack at a two-material interface, K I will be positive at one crack tip and negative at the other, depending upon the direction of the shear loading. When a normal compression is superimposed, the faces of such a shear crack are pressed together. At the tip where the mode I stress intensity factor associated with the shear loading is positive, the crack faces remain separated over some distance and form a bubble. This separation bubble allows the shear crack to propagate along a two-material interface without requiring the reclosed crack faces to slide.
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