Thermal analysis for cracks near interfaces between piezoelectric materials

A crack of arbitrary size and orientation near bimaterial interfaces between dissimilar thermopiezoelectric materials is considered. A system of singular integral equations for the unknown thermal analog of dislocation density defined on the crack faces is derived by way of the Stroh's formulation and the thermoelectroelastic Green's functions developed recently. The stress and electric displacement intensity factors are then computed by numerically solving these singular integral equations. Numerical results are obtained to elucidate the effects of crack orientation.