Effect of uniaxial compression on the nucleation of micro-damage in cement mortar under sulfate attack is investigated. Shape and size of micro-voids in cement mortar is detected using Micro Computed Tomography techniques. The formation of delayed ettringite crystal is analyzed using scanning electron microscope and energy disperse spectrum methods. Deformation of micro-voids and the distribution of stress at the surface of a micro-void are calculated. It is found that the nucleation of micro-cracks is caused by the tensile stress at the voids＇ surface, and such damage nucleation will be speeded up by the remote uniaxial compressive load.
Using the complex variable function method and the technique of the conformal mapping, the fracture problem of a semi-infinite crack in a piezoelectric strip is studied under the anti-plane shear stress and the in-plane electric load. The analytic solutions of the field intensity factors and the mechanical strain energy release rate are presented under the assumption that the surface of the crack is electrically impermeable. When the height of the strip tends to infinity, the analytic solutions of an infinitely large piezoelectric solid with a semi-infinite crack are obtained. Moreover, the present results can be reduced to the well-known solutions for a purely elastic material in the absence of the electric loading. In addition, numerical examples are given to show the influences of the loaded crack length, the height of the strip, and the applied mechanical/electric loads on the mechanical strain energy release rate.
A new approach is proposed to solve the elastic-plastic fields near the major-axis line of an elliptical hole. The complex variable method is used to determine the elastic fields near the major-axis line of the elliptical hole. Then, by using the line field analysis method, the exact and new solutions of the stresses, strains in the plastic zone, the size of the plastic region and the unit normal vector of the elastic-plastic boundary near the major-axis line of the elliptical hole are obtained for an anti-plane elliptical hole in a perfectly elastic-plastic solid. The usual small scale yielding assumptions are not adopted in the analysis. The present method is simple, easy and efficient. The influences of applied mechanical loading on the size of plastic zone are discussed.
A new exact and universal conformal mapping is proposed. Using Muskhelishvili＇s complex potential method, the plane elasticity problem of power function curved cracks is investigated with an arbitrary power of a natural number, and the general solutions of the stress intensity factors （SIFs） for mode I and mode II at the crack tip are obtained under the remotely uniform tensile loads. The present results can be reduced to the well-known solutions when the power of the function takes different natural numbers. Numerical examples are conducted to reveal the effects of the coefficient, the power, and the projected length along the x-axis of the power function curved crack on the SIFs for mode I and mode II.
Using the complex variable function method and the conformal mapping technique, the fracture problem of two semi-infinite collinear cracks in a piezoelectric strip is studied under the anti-plane shear stress and the in-plane electric load on the partial crack surface. Analytic solutions of the field intensity factors and the mechanical strain energy release rate are derived under the assumption that the surfaces of the crack are electrically impermeable. The results can be reduced to the well-known solutions for a purely elastic material in the absence of an electric load. Moreover, when the distance between the two crack tips tends to infinity, analytic solutions of a semi-infinite crack in a piezoelectric strip can be obtained. Numerical examples are given to show the influence of the loaded crack length, the height of the strip, the distance between the two crack tips, and the applied mechanical/electric loads on the mechanical strain energy release rate. It is shown that the material is easier to fail when the distance between two crack tips becomes shorter, and the mechanical/electric loads have greater influence on the propagation of the left crack than those of the right one.
Experimental results about concrete under sulfate attack are summarized, which include the variation of mass density of samples and velocity of ultrasonic wave propagating in samples. The evolution damage is analyzed in terms of the experimental results, and close attention is paid to the effect of damage evolution on Poisson＇s ratio. This study shows that Poisson＇s ratio is significantly affected by the concentration of solution and water-cement ratio. Poisson＇s ratio of concrete changes very little when the water-cement ratio is selected as 0.6 or 0.8, so that such change may be neglected. If water-cement is 0.4, however, the Poisson＇s ratio of the sample significantly changes. When the concrete sample of 0.4 water-cement ratio is immersed in sodium sulfate solution of 8% concentration for 285 days, Poisson＇s ratio increase 10.14% compared with its initial value. There exist a sensitive region and a non-sensitive region for the change rate of Poisson＇s ratio with respect to corrosion time. The change rate of Poisson＇s ratio monotonously decreases with corrosion time in the sensitive region; in the non-sensitive region, the change rate of Poisson＇s ratio is almost equal to zero.
