Penny shaped crack in a piezoelectric cylinder surrounded by an elastic medium subjected to combined in-plane mechanical and electrical loads

Abstract

The fracture problem of a penny shaped crack in a piezoelectric ceramic cylinder surrounded by an in.nite elastic medium under in-plane normal mechanical and electrical loads is considered with the electric continuous boundary conditions on the crack surface. By using the potential theory and Hankel transform, a system of dual integral equations is obtained, and expressed to a Fredholm integral equation of the second kind. The mechanical and electrical field equations and all sorts of field intensity factors of mode I are obtained, and the numerical values of various field intensity factors for PZT-6B piezoelectric ceramic surrounded by several different elastic media are graphically shown for a uniform load and a ring-shaped load, respectively. And the effects of the size of the piezoelectric cylinder and the elastic material properties on various field intensity factors are obtained. © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.