Interface crack with a contact zone in an isotropic bimaterial under thermomechanical loading

A plane problem for a thermally insulated interface crack with a contact zone in an isotropic bimaterial under tension–shear mechanical loading and a temperature flux is considered. The expressions for the stresses and the electrical flux as well as for the derivatives of the displacement and the temperature jumps at the material interfaces via sectionally holomorphic mechanical and thermal potential functions are given. After the solution of the thermal problem the inhomogeneous combined Dirichlet–Riemann boundary value problem is formulated and solved exactly. The stresses at the interface and the stress intensity factors at the singular points are presented in a clear analytical form. Special attention is devoted to the case of a small contact zone when the stress intensity factors can be presented in form similar to the associated presentation for an “open” crack model. A transcendental equation and an asymptotic analytic formula for the determination of the real contact zone length are derived. It is shown that for a certain bimaterial this length as well as the correspondent stress intensity factor are defined by a single parameter which depends on the normal-shear loading and the heat flux.