Crack-tip stress shielding by a hard fiber in β-SiC: an atomistic study

We present and discuss the application of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations addressed to investigate the interaction between a crack tip and a hard inclusion in monocrystalline β-SiC. We study the Griffith criterion for the stability of an isolated crack. As for the crack-inclusion interaction, we find that the presence of a hard inclusion affects the crack stress field beyond the linear regime. We prove that the nonlinear part of the stress and strain fields depends on the relative distance between the crack and the inclusion as power law.