Stress and electric displacement analyses in piezoelectric media with an elliptic hole and a small crack

In this paper, the interactions between an elliptic hole and an arbitrary distributed small crack in plane piezoelectric medium, which are often happened in engineering problems, are discussed. The Green’s functions in a piezoelectric plate with an elliptic hole for a generalized line dislocation and a generalized line force are presented. The small crack is represented by unknown continuous distributed dislocations. By considering traction free conditions on the surface of the small crack, the problem is then reduced to a group of singular integral equations which are solved by using a special numerical technique. Accuracy of the present method is confirmed by comparing the numerical results with those in literatures for PZT-4 when the elliptic hole is degenerated into a crack. The generalized stress intensity factors of cracks and the generalized stress on the edge of the elliptic hole are shown graphically. It is shown that the small crack may have shielding or amplifying effects on the main elliptic hole or crack, which depends on the location and orientation of the small crack. The hole near a crack can significantly reduce the stress intensity factor of the crack. The direction of the electric field is important to shielding effect.