Electro-elastic stress analysis for a Zener-Stroh crack at the interface of a piezoelectric material bonding to a metal

A Zener-Stroh crack can be nucleated at the PZT/metal bimaterial interface when piled-up dislocations along a slip plane in metal material are stopped by the interface which works as an obstacle. In our current research, the interfacial Zener-Stroh crack problem is formulated into a set of singular integral equations with a distributed dislocation technique. The singular integral equations are then solved with a numerical method following their nature of singularities. To tackle the oscillation behaviours near the crack tips, the contact zone model is considered. The stress field, stress and electric displacement intensity factors (SEDIFs) and contact zone length are discussed based on the numerical results.