Mode III fracture problem of two arbitrarily oriented cracks located within two bonded functionally graded material strips

This paper shows the anti-plane crack problem of two bonded functionally graded material (FGM) strips. Each strip contains an arbitrarily oriented crack. The material properties of the strips are assumed in exponential forms varied in the direction normal to the interface. After employing the Fourier transforms, the unknowns are solved from the interface conditions, boundary conditions and the condition on the crack surfaces. The problem can then be reduced to a system of singular integral equations, which are solved numerically by applying the Gauss-Chebyshev integration formula to obtain the stress intensity factors at the crack tips. In the discussions, several degenerated problems are considered to demonstrate the influence of the non-homogeneous parameters, crack orientations, edge effects and the crack interactions on the normalized intensity factors. In general, the factors are larger when crack tips are located in stronger material. Also, the factors increase as the crack is oriented in the direction normal to the interface. The conclusions made in this research can be used to evaluate the safety of two bonded strips once the cracks exist inside the structure.