Finiteness of the stress in presence of closely located inclusions with imperfect bonding

Abstract: If two conducting or insulating inclusions are closely located, the gradient of the solution may become arbitrarily large as the distance between inclusions tends to zero, resulting in high concentration of stress in between two inclusions. This happens if the bonding of the inclusions and the matrix is perfect, meaning that the potential and flux are continuous across the interface. In this paper, we consider the case when the bonding is imperfect. We consider the case when there are two circular inclusions of the same radii with the imperfect bonding interfaces and prove that the gradient of the solution is bounded regardless of the distance between inclusions if the bonding parameter is finite. This result is of particular importance since the imperfect bonding interface condition is an approximation of the membrane structure of biological inclusions such as biological cells.