Three-dimensional asymptotic stress fields at the front of a trimaterial junction

► Dependence of stress singularity on wedge aperture angle. ► Third material acts as amplifier or reducer of the severity of stress singularity. ► Through-thickness variations of normalized stress intensity factors presented. ► Discontinuity in stress intensity factor at mid-surface in the skew-symmetric case. A recently developed eigenfunction expansion method is employed for obtaining three-dimensional asymptotic displacement and stress fields in the vicinity of the junction corner front of an infinite pie-shaped trimaterial wedge, of finite thickness, formed as a result of bimaterial (matrix plus reaction product or contaminant) deposit over a substrate or reinforcement. The wedge is subjected to extension/bending (mode I), inplane shear/twisting (mode II) and antiplane shear (mode III) far field loading. Each material is isotropic and elastic, but with different material properties. The material 2 (substrate) is always taken to be a half-space, while the wedge aperture angle of the material 1 is varied to represent varying composition of the bimaterial deposit. Numerical results pertaining to the variation of the mode I, II, III eigenvalues (or stress singularities) with various moduli ratios as well as the wedge aperture angle of the material 1 (reaction product/contaminant), are also presented. Hitherto unavailable results, pertaining to the through-thickness variations of stress intensity factors for symmetric exponentially decaying distributed load and its skew-symmetric counterpart that also satisfy the boundary conditions on the top and bottom surfaces of the trimaterial plates under investigation, bridge a longstanding gap in the stress singularity/interfacial fracture mechanics literature.