Interaction between a nanocrack with surface elasticity and a screw dislocation
In the present analytical study, we consider the problem of a nanocrack with surface elasticity interacting with a screw dislocation. The surface elasticity is incorporated by using the continuum-based surface/interface model of Gurtin and Murdoch. By considering both distributed screw dislocations and line forces on the crack, we reduce the interaction problem to two decoupled first-order Cauchy singular integro-differential equations which can be numerically solved by the collocation method. The analysis indicates that if the dislocation is on the real axis where the crack is located, the stresses at the crack tips only exhibit the weak logarithmic singularity; if the dislocation is not on the real axis, however, the stresses exhibit both the weak logarithmic and the strong square-root singularities. Our result suggests that the surface effects of the crack will make the fracture more ductile. The criterion for the spontaneous generation of dislocations at the crack tip is proposed.