Elastic monopole modelling of defects in thermoelastic media (Q1064105)

A unified theory for the treatment of the quantitative properties of lattices defects in thermoelastic media has been developed in this article. It is shown that the defects may be represented by a distribution of surface and volume elastic monopoles. It is further shown that an arbitrary three-dimensional (planar or curved) crack can also be modelled by a distribution of surface and volume elastic monopoles, the monopoles of which have to satisfy a system of boundary integral equations.