Growth of plastic zones due to heat loading near a closed interface crack

A bimaterial, consisting of two conjugated half-planes possessing different thermophysical characteristics, with an interface crack closed due to external pressure is considered. The growth of interface plastic zones near the crack tips, caused by a heat flow and thermal resistance of crack faces, is investigated. The complex potentials of the problem that define main characteristics of the bimaterial thermal stress state are expressed in terms of interface jump discontinuities of temperature and tangential displacements, which simulate the crack and plastic zones. A system of singular integro-differential equations in these functions is obtained. The length of plastic zones is derived from the condition for interface shear stress boundedness in the tips of these zones. The closed form expressions for the displacement jumps of the bimaterial components and the plastic zones length are obtained for a certain thermal resistance.