Interplay between Fracture and Domain Switching of Ferroelectrics
Applications of above-coercive electric fields lead to domain switching of a large or global scale. Large scale switching model is proposed to deal with load-induced domains witching in experiment. Both a discussion of crack initiation via the stress intensity factor and a discussion of crack path stability via T-stress are presented. The theoretical predictions and the experimental data roughly coincide for crack initiation, propagation and stability phenomena. Attention is also extended to consider the effect of non-uniform ferro-elastic domain switching in the vicinity of a crack. The domain switching zone is divided into a saturated inner core and an active surrounding annulus. Toughening for ferroelectrics with different poling states is estimated via Reuss type approximation. Solutions obtained according to spherical and cylindrical inclusions cover the range of experimental data.