Interaction of parallel dielectric cracks in functionally graded piezoelectric materials

In this paper, the problem of two interacting parallel cracks in functionally graded piezoelectric materials under in-plane electromechanical loads is studied. The formulation is based on using Fourier transforms and modeling the cracks as distributed dislocations, and the resulting singular integral equations are solved with Chebyshev polynomials. A dielectric crack model considering the crack filling effect is adopted to describe the electric boundary conditions along crack surfaces. Numerical simulations are made to show the effect of material gradient, the geometry of interacting cracks, and crack position upon fracture parameters such as stress intensity factors, electric displacement intensity factor, and COD intensity factor. By considering the effect of a dielectric medium inside the crack and crack deformation, the results obtained from the dielectric crack model are always between those from the traditional crack models with physical limitation.