Energy Release Rate Criteria for Piezoelectric Solids

Abstract

Criteria for crack propagation are fundamentally important in the study of fracture mechanics. Stress-based criteria and energy-based criteria result in quite similar fracture predictions for isotropic elastic materials. However, this is not the case for anisotropic materials. The prediction of crack propagation in piezoelectric materials is further complicated by the coupling between mechanical and electrical fields. Pak [1] studied an impermeable plane crack perpendicular to the poling direction and showed that both a positive and a negative electric field retard crack propagation based on the criterion of total energy release rate. Park and Sun [2] proposed strain energy release rate as the fracture criterion, which predicts that a positive electric field promotes crack propagation and a negative one retards propagation. The assumption of self-similar crack propagation was extensively used in the above studies.