ANALYSIS OF CRACK INITIATION AND PROPAGATION IN A PIEZOELECTRIC CERAMIC USING THE BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the analysis of crack initiation and propagation in barium titanate ceramic using the boundary element method. In micro-mechanical analyses, it is very important to have information on the real microstructure of a material. A barium titanate pellet was prepared using a solid-state technique. The boundary element method is used so that it can be combined with three different grain boundary formulations for the investigation of micro-mechanics as well as crack initiation and propagation in a piezoelectric actuator. In order to develop a numerical programming algorithm, suitable models of polycrystalline aggregate and representative volume elements have been prepared for boundary element analysis.