Evaluation of crack tip driving force for interfacial cracks between piezoelectric actuators and elastic substrates is crucial to successful applications of smart materials and smart structures. Here the behavior of an interfacial crack between a piezoelectric material and an elastic material in under in-plane loading is studies. The displacement mismatch along a bonded interface due to electric potential loading on the piezoelectric material is modeled by an array of uniformly distributed dislocations along the interface. Using Fourier transformation method, the governing equations are converted to an integral equation, which is then converted to a standard Hilbert problem. A closed form solution for stresses, electric field, and electric displacements along the bonded interface is obtained. The results agree very well with that from numerical simulations using the finite element method. The results show that the closed form solution is not only accurate for far field distributions of stresses and electric variables, but also accurate for the asymptotic distributions near the crack tip. The solution also suggests the likelihood of domain switch in the piezoelectric material near the crack tip.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe
