Interaction between collinear periodic cracks in an infinite piezoelectric body

The problem of collinear periodic cracks in an infinite piezoelectric body is studied. Effect of saturation strips at the crack-tips is taken into account. By means of the Stroh formalism and the conformal mapping technique, the general periodic solutions for collinear cracks are obtained. The stress intensity factors and the size of saturation strips are derived analytically, and their dependencies on the ratio of the periodicity on the half-length of the crack are analyzed in detail. Numerical results show the following two facts. (1) When h/l>4.0, the stress intensity factors become almost identical to those of a single crack in an infinite piezoelectric body. This indicates that the interaction between cracks can be ignored in establishing the criterion for the crack initiation in this case. (2) The speed of the saturation strip size of periodic cracks approaching that of a single crack depends on the electric load applied at infinity. In general, a large electric load at infinity is associated with a slow approaching speed.