The problem of a semi-infinite propagating crack in the piezoelectric material subjected to a dynamic anti-plane concentrated body force is investigated in the present study. It is assumed that between the growing crack surfaces there is a permeable vacuum free space, in which the electrostatic potential is nonzero. It is noted that this problem has characteristic lengths and a direct attempt towards solving this problem by transform and Wiener-Hopf techniques [1] is not applicable. This paper proposes a new fundamental solution for propagating crack in the piezoelectric material and the transient response of the propagating crack is determined by superposition of the fundamental solution in the Laplace transform domain. The fundamental solution represents the responses of applying exponentially distributed loadings in the Laplace transform domain on the propagating crack surface. Exact analytical transient solutions for the dynamic stress intensity factor and the dynamic electric displacement intensity factor are obtained by using the Cagniard-de Hoop method [2,3] of Laplace inversion and are expressed in explicit forms. Finally, numerical results based on analytical solutions are calculated and are discussed in detail.

This paper applies the method of self-similar potentials to analyze the dynamic behaviors of the problems of mode-I, mode-II, and mode-III cracks propagating along the x-axis with constant speed, while the constant speeds of both crack tips are not the same, called nonsymmetric crack expansion. It is assumed that an unbound homogeneous isotropic elastic material is at rest for time t < 0. However, for time t ≥ 0, a central crack starts to extend from zero length along the x-axis. On the crack surfaces of x ≥ 0, there exists uniform distributed load such that the rightmost crack tip propagates with speed ms, while the leftmost crack tip with speed s, where m > 1 and is constant. First, the complete solutions of the mode-I, mode-II, and mode-III problems are obtained. After the complete solutions are found, attention is focused on the crack surface displacements and dynamic stress intensity factors. The results of this study show that the DSIF is equal to the static SIF when the crack-tip speed is zero, and DSIF is zero as the crack-tip speed approaches the Rayleigh-wave speed. Moreover, for the special case m = 1 which indicates that the velocities of both crack tips are the same, the DSIFs of this three modes in this study is the same as those of Ref. [15].