AbstractThe problem of sharp notch in couple-stress elasticity is considered in this paper. The problem involves a sharp notch in a body of infinite extent. The body has microstructural properties, which are assumed to be characterized by couple-stress effects. Both symmetric and anti-symmetric loadings at remote regions are considered under plane-strain conditions. The faces of the notch are considered traction free. To determine the field around the tip of the notch, a boundary-layer approach is followed by considering an expansion of the displacements in a form of separated variables in a polar coordinate system. Our analysis is in the spirit of the Knein–Williams and Karp–Karal asymptotic techniques but it is much more involved than its corresponding analysis of standard elasticity due to the complicated boundary value problem (higher-order system of governing PDEs and additional boundary conditions as compared to the standard theory). Eventually, an eigenvalue problem is formulated and this, along with the restriction of a bounded potential energy, provides the asymptotic fields. The cases of a crack and a half-space are analyzed as limit cases of the general notch problem. Certain deviations from the standard classical elasticity results are noted.