Thermal Effects on Fracture of Piezoelectric Materials

It is interesting to know how thermal effects influence the fracture behaviors of piezoelectric materials. Experimental observations have found that the fracture toughness of piezoelectric solids under electric loading may be significantly different from that under mechanical loading, and that a pronounced rise of temperature may be caused by either mechanical or electrical loading. There are many factors that change the temperature distribution and energy dissipation at a crack tip, for instance, concentration of electroelastic fields, coupling of mechanical and electrical fields, and nonlinear behaviors of materials. In the present paper, two kinds of thermal effects are investigated under electric saturation and electromechanical impact loading. The temperature fields are derived under the assumption of decoupling between thermal and electromechanical fields.