This is a recent article in Acta Materialia on the propagation of conducting cracks in ferroelectric ceramics
Title: Conducting crack propagation driven by electric fields in ferroelectric ceramics
Authors: Amir Abdollahi and Irene Arias, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona
Abstract:
Dear Colleague,
I have uploaded a video which shows the simulation of Slow-Fast crack propagation in ferroelectric single crystals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7WSVOVAWM
For technical details, please refer to our recently published paper in Acta Materialia:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359645411001777
Best regards,
Ferroelectric materials have seen applications as actuators (the fuel injection system in the latest BMWs), sensors (naval sonar systems), and ferroelectric nonvolatile random access memories (FRAMs). For actuators and sensors it is the piezoelectric behavior of these materials that is exploited, while for FRAMs the ability of the material to “switch” polarization states is the essential feature for the application.
Polarization switching-induced shielding or anti-shielding of an electrically permeable crack in a mono-domain ferroelectric material with the original polarization direction perpendicular to the crack is simulated by a phase field model based on the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation. The domain wall energy and the long-range mechanical and electrical interactions between polarizations are taken into account. The phase field simulations exhibit a wing-shape- switched zone backwards the crack tip.
