STRESS SINGULARITIES IN THE PLANE ELASTICITY OF THE COMPOSITE WEDGE

This paper examines the composite, two-dimensional, linear elastic wedge for singular stresses at its vertex. A full range of wedge boundary and matching conditions is considered. Using separation of variables on the Airy stress function, the usual determinant conditions for singularities of the form O(r-λ) as r → 0 are established and further conditions are derived for singularities of the form O(r-λ ln r) as r → 0. The order of the determinant involved in these conditions depends upon the number of materials comprising the wedge. Two systematic methods of expanding the determinant for the N-material wedge are presented. © 1979 Sijthoff & Noordhoff International Publishers.