Electromechanical fracture analysis for corners and cracks in piezoelectric materials

Corners and cracks are usually studied separately in the literature. To build a bridge connecting these two different but similar topics, in this paper the solutions for piezoelectric multi-wedges, which cover corners and interface corners, are used to study the cracks and interface cracks in piezoelectric materials. Moreover, the stress/electric intensity factors defined for cracks, interface cracks and interface corners are also extended to the general corners. By taking the special feature of Stroh formalism for anisotropic elasticity, all the solutions presented in this paper for piezoelectric materials preserve the same matrix form as those of the corresponding anisotropic problems. To see more clearly about the piezoeffects on the corners and cracks, most of the complex matrix form solutions are expanded in real component form for two typical piezoelectric ceramics with different poling directions.