Crack tip opening displacement of a Dugdale crack in a three-phase cylindrical model composite material

The analytical investigation of the plastic zone size of a crack in three-phase cylindrical model composite material was carried out. The physical problem is simulated as a crack near a circular inclusion (a single fiber) in the composite matrix, while the three-phase cylindrical composite model is used to represent the composite matrix. In the solution procedure, the crack is simulated as a continuous distribution of edge dislocations. With the Dugdale model of small scale yielding, a thin strip of yielded plastic zone is introduced at each crack tip. Using the solution for a three-phase model with a single dislocation in the matrix phase as the Green’s function, the physical problem is formulated into a set of singular integral equations. By employing Erdogan and Gupta’s method, as well as iterative numerical procedures, the singular integral equations are solved numerically for the plastic zone sizes and crack tip opening displacements.