Numerical Analysis On Crack Propagation Of Piezoelectric Material

In a view of its good mechanical property and intrinsic coupling effects between electric fields and mechanical deformation, piezoelectric material has been extensively used in the manufacturing industry of transducers and sensors. Due to the brittle property and low fracture toughness, usually about1MPa, piezoelectric materials with initial defect are easy to break. So it is necessary to analyze the fracture behavior, which has also become the research focus, of the piezoelectric materials.This paper firstly summarized the former viewpoint of piezoelectric fracture behavior. Relevant study was focused on boundary condition of crack surface, which includes the electrical boundary condition and the stress boundary condition, and the fracture criterion. The main point about the fracture criterion includes total energy release rate criterion, mechanical energy release rate criterion, stress intensity factor criterion, energy density factor criterion and the COD criterion. Because of the coupling effect between electric fields and mechanical deformation, it is very difficult to use the finite permeable crack model and non stress-free boundary condition, which are more close to the real situation. People often solve the piezoelectric fracture problem with permeable crack model or insulation crack model and stress free boundary condition, and using this way can get the result which meet the requirement of accuracy under special situation.And secondly, the paper simulated the fracture behavior of infinite plate with mid-crack of piezoelectric material by using ABAQUS. Then the paper calculated the mechanical energy release rate of different fixed crack length under mechanical loading cases and electric-mechanical loading cases by the method of MCCI, respectively. The MCCI result meets the analytical solution very well, which proves the correctness of the simulation method used in this paper. After that, the paper using ABAQUS simulated the situation of crack propagation and getting the MCCI. By comparison the result of fixed crack and the result of crack propagation, finding the mechanical energy release rate remained at the same value roughly, which proves the correctness of mechanical energy release rate.