Investigation of the crack problem in non-local piezoelectric materials under combined electromechanical loadings

The present investigation of the crack problem in piezoelectric materials is performed based on the non-local theory. After some manipulations, the impermeable crack, the permeable crack (the crack gap is full of NaCI solution), and the semi-permeable crack (the crack gap is full of air or silicon oil) are reduced to a uniform formulation by assuming the normal electric displacement on the crack surfaces to be an unknown variable. Thus, a triple integral equation with the unknown normal electric displacement is established. By using the Newton iterative method and solving the triple integral equation, it is found that the normal electric displacement on the crack surfaces is no longer a constant as determined by previous studies, rather, it depends upon the remote combined electromechanical loadings. Numerical results of the stresses and electric displacement fields show that there are no singularities at the crack tips so that the stresses remain finite. It is of great significance that the concrete electric boundary condition on the crack surfaces exerts significant influence on the near-tip fields and in this way plays an important role in evaluating the crack stability in the non-local piezoelectric materials. More specifically, the impermeable crack model always overestimates the finite stresses at the crack tips, whereas the permeable crack model always underestimates them.