Stress singularities at vertices of conical inclusions with freely sliding interfaces

The axisymmetric problem of the elastic stress singularity at the vertex of a conical inclusion bonded into a conical notch is analyzed. The shear stress is assumed to vanish along the interface while the normal stress is fully transmitted. This corresponds to the low load-low deformation regime of high temperature materials, when the grain boundaries and the interfaces of second phase particles may slide viscously. The stress and displacement fields are expressed in terms of spherical harmonic functions and the singularity exponent is obtained from the solution of the eigenproblem defined by the boundary conditions. Supersingularities of the stress field close to the vertex were found for certain configurations. In all analyzed cases, only real singularities were obtained. Copyright 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd