Effect of electric displacement saturation on the hysteretic behavior of ferroelectric ceramics and the initiation and propagation of cracks in piezoelectric ceramics

This paper presents a computational investigation of a proposed simplified account for electric displacement saturation on the hysteretic behavior of initially unpoled ferroelectric ceramics as well as on the initiation and propagation of cracks in poled ferroelectric ceramics within the linear regime of piezoelectricity. For the latter case, experimental observations suggest an odd dependency of the onset of crack initiation in these brittle materials on the orientation of the applied electric field with respect to their poling direction which contradicts theoretical results which propose an even dependency of the energy release rate on the applied electric field within the framework of anisotropic linear piezoelectricity. Electric non-linearities arising at regions of inhomogeneities such as inclusions or at the crack tip are proposed in the literature to avoid this discrepancy. Electric displacement saturation is one such non-linear effect which is investigated in this work. A simplified account of this effect is proposed based on an exponential saturation model of the identified material parameters which can be related to this non-linearity. Its advantage over the superposition of a complex function onto the singular solution of a crack within the framework of linear piezoelectricity lies in the straightforward extension of the proposed approach to problems where no analytical solutions exist. This is outlined based on its incorporation into a rate-dependent ferroelectric model accounting for polarization switching as well as based on its incorporation into a finite element framework capable of simulating the initiation and propagation of cracks in piezoelectric ceramics through strong discontinuities in the displacement field and the electric potential. It is shown that besides the determination of the crack initiation onset also the crack propagation direction is influenced by the appearance of saturation zones arising at the crack tip normal to the polarization direction. The numerically obtained crack paths are found to be close to the experimentally reported results.