Dynamic penny-shaped cracks in multilayer sandwich composites

A point force method is proposed for obtaining the dynamic elastic response of a multilayer sandwich composite in the presence of a penny-shaped crack under a harmonic loading. The sandwich composite is a multilayered solid whose lower half is the mirror image of the upper half with the center plane as the mirror. The crack is lying on the mirror plane of the composite. The solution of the mode I dynamic crack problem is formulated by integrating the Green’s function of a time-harmonic surface normal point force over the crack surface with an unknown point force distribution. The dual integral equations of the unknown point force distribution are established by considering the boundary conditions, which can be reduced to a Fredholm integral equation of the second kind. A complete solution of the crack problem under consideration can be obtained by solving this Fredholm integral equation. It will be shown that the results obtained by this approach are the same as some existing solutions.