Fracture of a piezoelectric material strip under steady state thermal load

Thermal effects become important when the piezoelectric material has to be operated in either extremely hot or cold temperature environments. It is essential to know the interaction of mechanical defects with thermal changes. In this article, we examine the piezothermoelastic problem for a Griffith crack that is located in a piezoelectric material strip. The strip is infinite along the x-direction and has finite thickness in the y-direction. The crack plane is parallel to the boundary of the strip. The polarized axis of the piezoelectric material is either normal or parallel to the y-direction. The basic entities are the Fourier transform and singular integral equation techniques. The crack-tip fields are obtained. The variation in crack-tip field intensity factors due to changes of the crack size and location is studied for different poling directions.