The elastic interaction of an edge dislocation with a wedge crack was investigated by using the Muskhelishvili complex potential treatment. The stress intensity factors which were introduced by the dislocation, the strain energy, and the image force which acted on the dislocation were calculated. In particular, the effect of the wedge angle upon shielding effects and image forces was investigated. The results showed that the radial component of the image force was inversely proportional to the distance from the crack tip to the dislocation, and that the tangential image force increased with increasing wedge angle for a given dislocation position. When the slip plane passed the crack tip, the tendency of the edge dislocation to shield or anti-shield the crack tip depended upon its Burgers vector. The slip plane of an edge dislocation, which was inclined at an angle to the positive real axis that corresponded to maximum mode-I crack shielding, increased slightly to a maximum and then decreased with increasing wedge angle. Regardless of the wedge angle, the maximum mode-II shielding (or anti-shielding) occurred when the dislocation was located on the positive real axis.

T.Y.Zhang, P.Tong, H.Ouyang, S.Lee: Journal of Applied Physics, 1995, 78[8], 4873-80