For a crack on the real axis under applied shear traction , write for the additional complex stress potential for antiplane shear derivative. Reflection of the induced displacement gives . Traction-free crack faces therefore require ; intact portions have . This is a scalar Riemann-Hilbert problem. Endpoint regularity, single-valued displacement and the absence of additional remote loads fix its homogeneous terms.
For antiplane shear, the infinitesimal displacement is . The isotropic linear elasticity constitutive law gives and , together with the symmetric entries . All other stress tensor components vanish. Static force balance without body force becomes , so satisfies the Laplace equation.
Locally choose a harmonic conjugate by and . Compatibility follows from the Laplace equation. These are the Cauchy-Riemann equations for , and hence
Thus the complex stress potential for antiplane shear supplies both stresses and, by integration, the displacement. A global potential must have the displacement periods appropriate to the cracked body; these periods also help fix homogeneous solutions.
For the additional crack-induced field, set and . Only loads the prospective faces, since is tangential to their normal. Denote upper and lower boundary values by . The imposed cancellation of face tractions is . The traction data and geometry are invariant under the displacement reflection . For the induced correction with no independently added loading, uniqueness up to a rigid translation allows the odd displacement choice. Then is even, is odd, and on the real axis. Therefore the Hilbert problem for an antiplane crack is
The second condition expresses continuation through uncracked material. There is real and the additional vanishes. This scalar Riemann-Hilbert problem is supplemented by at most inverse-square-root stress singularities at the crack tips and the usual correction with no additional remote resultant or imposed dislocation. Without a far-field or period normalization, the face conditions alone permit homogeneous terms. The formulas below select this normalized induced field and explicitly identify the excluded terms.