Shear cracks in thermoelastic and poroelastic media (Q1201448)

The objective is the investigation of the quasi-static plane strain fracture mechanism for the, mathematically analogous, cases of coupled quasi-static thermoelastic and poroelastic materials for arbitrary stress fields. For such kind of materials the exact solution is obtained for the problem of an impulsively sheared semi-infinite crack in the Laplace and Fourier transform domains by using the Wiener-Hopf technique, and the crack tip behaviour is analysed. Interesting results regarding the stress intensity factor, the steadily propagating shear crack, and the crack tip behaviour are obtained for cracks with permeable (conducting) or impermeable (insulating) crack surface. The most of the results are derived in situations involving a complete coupling of the poroelastic equations and boundary conditions.