Near-Tip fields of mode III steady-state crack propagation in elastic-plastic strain gradient solids

The flow-theory version of couple stress strain gradient plasticity is adopted for investigating the asymptotic fields near a steadily propagating crack-tip, under Mode III loading condi-tions. By incorporating a material characteristic length, typically of the order of few microns for ductile metals, the adopted constitutive model accounts for the micro¬structure of the material and can capture the strong size effects arising at small scales. The effects of micro-structure result in a substantial increase in the singularities of the skew-symmetric stress and couple stress fields, also for small hardening. The symmetric stress field turns out to be non-singular according to the asymptotic solution for the stationary crack problem in linear elastic couple stress materials. The performed asymptotic analysis can provide useful predictions about the increase of the traction level ahead of the crack-tip due to the sole contribution of the rotation gradient, which has been found relevant and non negligible at the micron scale.