Interaction of a screw dislocation with a notch in a piezoelectric bi-material

Summary The electro-elastic interaction of a screw dislocation and a notch in a piezoelectric bi-material is analyzed. The electro-elastic fields induced by the dislocation are derived using the conformal mapping and the image-dislocation approach, where the solution for a piezoelectric bi-material without a notch is used as a base. The stress and the electric displacement intensity factors of the notch and the image force on the dislocation are given explicitly. We find that intensity factors are expressed in terms of the effective material constants, while the radial component of the image force is independent of the notch angle and the angular position of the dislocation in the polar coordinate system. Numerical results for the image force are provided for the use when one of the two media is purely elastic. They illustrate the behavior of the dislocation in the neighborhood of the notch.