Effect of the regular term on the stress field in a joint of dissimilar materials under remote mechanical load

Summary For most geometries and material combinations, stresses at the intersection of outer edges and the interface of a joint of two dissimilar materials are singular for elastic response under mechanical or thermal loads. Near the singular point the stresses can be described by a sum of singular terms and one regular term, which is independent of the distance from the singular point. Earlier investigations have shown that the regular term is also important in the description of the singular field. For thermal loading, for instance, there is a homogeneous temperature change in the joint; the regular stress term is nonzero. For a remote mechanical loading, the regular stress term is always nonzero for some geometries and material combinations. One important case is a joint with an interface crack, in which the so called T-stress term is the regular term and always nonzero.In this paper, the regular stress term will be determined for a joint under a remote mechanical load. The conditions of a joint with a nonzero regular term and the formulas to calculate the regular stress term will be presented both for an arbitrary joint geometry (θ1,θ2) and for some special cases. Examples will be introduced, to show the contribution of the regular term to the stress distribution near the singular point.