On the electrical boundary conditions on the crack surfaces in piezoelectric ceramics

This paper investigates a cracked piezoelectric ceramic under remote electro-mechanical loads. The ideal crack boundary conditions for electrically impermeable and permeable crack assumptions, and the deformed crack with a yet-to-be-determined crack shape are considered. The last is referred to as the "natural boundary condition (NBC)". Closed-form solutions to the crack-tip field intensity factors are obtained. The analysis shows that traditional approaches to the electric boundary conditions on the crack faces, that is, either the impermeable crack assumption or the permeable crack assumption, produce significantly different results for the crack-tip quantities such as electric displacement intensity factor, energy release rate and crack opening displacement. There are also considerable differences between the results obtained from traditional impermeable and permeable crack analyses and those obtained from the proposed NBC. The difference increases with applied electric loads.