Slip/diffusion zone effects at rapidly-loaded cracks in thermoelastic solids

The effect of a zone of slip and diffusion mechanisms that form prior to the onset of plastic yield at the edge of a rapidly-loaded Mode I crack in a fully-coupled thermoelastic material is studied. The resulting initial/mixed boundary value problem is solved exactly in the transform space, despite the existence of poles and branch points that vary with the time transform variable.Crack edge stress singularity relaxation is assumed, and this condition leads to exact expressions for the time transforms of a zone characterization function and the temperature change induced ahead of the crack. Study of their inverses for long, i.e. O(1)s, times after loading shows that a slip/diffusion process that is consistent with rapid crack surface separation can indeed relax elastic stresses, but that high temperature increases may well have to await the development of full plasticity and fracture at the crack edge.