On the influence of the switching wake on the fracture toughness of ferroelectric materials

In this paper, the influence of the switching wake on the fracture toughness of ferroelectric materials is investigated. The anisotropic and electromechanically coupled properties are considered. To determine the switching wake, the second switching of the ferroelectric domain must be considered. Due to the complexity in determining the switching wake, only monodomain ferroelectrics are considered. The results show that the difference between the calculated toughnesses of the model with and without the switching wake is not significant. It is also shown that a positive applied electric field increases the fracture toughness and a negative applied electric field decreases the toughness. The toughness for the 90° poling direction is lower than that for the 0° poling direction.