Numerical investigation of the stress field near a crack normal to ceramic-metal interface

Ceramic metal interfaces are often present in composite materials. The presence of cracks has a major impact on the reliability of advanced materials, such as fiber or particle reinforced ceramic composites, ceramic interfaces and laminated ceramics. The understanding of the failure mechanisms is very important, as is as the estimation of fracture parameters at the tip of the crack approaching an interface and crack propagation path. A cracked sandwich plate loaded with axial uniform normal stress was numerically investigated using plane strain Finite Element Analysis. The numerical results for the singularity orders were compared with the analytical solution. The influences of the material combination and crack length on the radial and circumferential stresses and displacement distributions were investigated. The Stress Intensity Factors were determined based on numerical results using a displacement extrapolation method. The results for the non-dimensional stress intensity factors show that at lower crack lengths the influence of material mismatch is lower, but this influence increases with increasing crack length.