Mixed-Mode Loading of a Straight Crack With Surface Strain-Gradient Elasticity

Abstract This work models brittle fracture using a linearized surface–substrate theory in which the crack faces possess surface stresses derived from a surface strain-gradient elastic energy. The model incorporates surface stretching, curvature, and surface gradients of stretching into the surface energy, thereby capturing small-length-scale effects absent from earlier surface elasticity formulations. The theory, supplemented with physically motivated tip conditions, is applied to the mixed mode-I/mode-II loading of a finite straight crack in an infinite isotropic plate. Using complex-analytic techniques, it is shown that the resulting stress and strain fields remain bounded up to the crack tips for nearly all admissible parameter values. Combined with previous results for mode-III loading, the analysis demonstrates that linearized surface–substrate models incorporating surface strain-gradient elasticity eliminate crack-tip singularities across all principal modes of far-field loading.