General solutions for thermopiezoelectrics with various holes under thermal loading (Q1579965)

This paper studies the interaction between a crack and a hole embedded in an infinite piezothermoelastic plate. A unifying solution based on Stroh's formalism and on the method of conformal mappings is presented for cracks and holes of various shapes induced by thermal loads such as uniform heat flow, point heat source, and temperature discontinuity. The unified stationary solution is given separately for thermal and piezoelectric fields within the theory of piezothermoelasticity in lieu of that of thermopiezoelectricity. As an application, the author solves numerically two examples restricted to the piezoelectric case (a piezoceramic plate with a crack and a square hole, and an infinite isotropic elastic plate containing a circle and a crack). The results are compared with results obtained by the finite element method, and are shown to agree with existing analytical results.