Damage analysis and fracture criteria for piezoelectric ceramics

Both the mechanical and the electrical damages are introduced to study fracture mechanics of piezoelectric ceramics in this paper. Two kinds of piezoelectric fracture criteria are proposed by using the damage theory combined with the well-known piezoelectric fracture experiments of Park and Sun [Fracture criteria of piezoelectric ceramics, J. Am. Ceram. Soc. 78 (1995) 1475-1480]. One is based on a critical state of the mechanical damage and the other on a critical value of a proper linear combination of both the mechanical and the electrical damage variables. It is found that the fracture load predicted, which takes the mechanical damage into account only (mode 1), has greater deviation than predicted result by considering a proper linear combination of the mechanical and the electrical damages (mode 2). And the fracture criterion corresponding to mode 2 presented is shown to be superior to mode 1. It is also demonstrated that the mechanical damage has greater effect on fracture than the electrical damage.