Fracture Analysis of Magnetoelectroelastic Composite Materials

This paper presents a crack analysis of linear magnetoelectroelastic materials subjected to static loading conditions. To this end, an efficient boundary element method (BEM) is developed. Unlike many previous investigations published in literature, two-dimensional (2-D) linear magnetoelectroelastic materials possessing fully coupled piezoelectric, piezomagnetic and magnetoelectric effects are considered in this paper. A combination of the displacement BEM and the traction BEM is used in the present formulation. The displacement BEM is applied for the external boundary of the cracked solid, while the traction BEM is used for the crack-faces. A regularization technique is implemented to compute the strongly singular and hypersingular boundary integrals in the BEM. The electric displacement intensity factor (EDIF), the magnetic induction intensity factor (MIIF), the stress intensity factors (SIF), the mechanical strain energy release rate (MSERR) and the total energy release rate (TERR) are evaluated directly from the computed nodal values at discontinuous quarter point elements placed next to the crack tip. The accuracy of the BEM is verified by analytical solutions known in literature. Results are presented for a branched crack in a bending specimen subjected to combined magnetic-electric-mechanical loading conditions.