A domain-independent interaction integral for fracture analysis of nonhomogeneous piezoelectric materials

Piezoelectric materials and structures contain more or less electromechanical interfaces in engineering applications. It is difficult to obtain the fracture parameters efficiently of the piezoelectric materials with complex interfaces. This paper presents a domain-independent interaction integral for material nonhomogeneity and discontinuity which can be used for solving the stress intensity factors (SIFs) and the electric displacement intensity factor (EDIF) of piezoelectric materials with complex interfaces efficiently. The interaction integral is based on the J-integral by superimposition of two admissible states and the present formulation does not involve any derivatives of mechanical and electric properties. Moreover, it is proved that the interface in the integral domain does not affect the value of the interaction integral and thus, the present method does not require electromechanical parameters of piezoelectric materials to be continuous. The interaction integral method combined with the extended finite element method (XFEM) is used to investigate the influences of material continuity on the SIF and the EDIF and the results show that the material parameters and their first-order derivatives affect both the SIF and the EDIF greatly, while the higher-order derivatives affect both of them slightly.