Asymptotic Stress Field for a Crack Normal to a 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, like fiber or particle reinforced ceramic composites, ceramic interfaces, laminated ceramics. The understanding of the failure mechanisms is very important, as much as the estimation of fracture parameters at a tip of the crack approaching an interface and crack propagation path. The asymptotic solution of the stress field at the tip of a crack normal to a bi-material interface is presented. A cracked sandwich plate loaded by uniform normal stress was numerically investigated using Finite Element Analysis. The numerical results of the circumferential stress distribution were compared with the analytical solutions. 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 the crack length.