Due to their intrinsic electromechanical coupling behavior, piezoelectric materials are widely used in sensors, actuators and other modern technologies. It is well known that piezoelectric ceramics are very brittle and susceptible to fracture. In many cases, fracture occurs at interfaces as debonding and cracks. This leads to an undesired degradation of electrical and mechanical performance. Because of the practical and fundamental importance of the problem, interface cracks in piezoelectric materials have been actively studied in the last few decades. This review provides a comprehensive survey of recent works on cracks situated at the interface of two materials, at least one of which has piezoelectric or piezoelectromagnetic properties. Different electric boundary conditions along the crack faces are discussed. The oscillating and contact zone models for in-plane straight interface cracks between two dissimilar piezoelectric materials or between piezoelectric and non-piezoelectric ones are reviewed. Different peculiarities related to the investigation of interface cracks in piezoelectric materials for the anti-plane case, for functionally graded and thermopiezoelectric materials are presented. Papers related to magnetoelectroelastic bimaterials, to steady state motion of interface cracks in piezoelectric bimaterials and to circular arc-cracks at the interface of piezoelectric materials are reviewed, and various methods used to address these problems are discussed. The review concludes with an outlook on future research directions.

The crushing strength of the breeder material [lithium orthosilicate (Li4SiO4 or OSi)] in the form of pebbles to be used for EU solid breeder concept is investigated. The pebbles are fabricated using a melt-spray method, and hence, a size variation in the pebbles produced is expected. Knowledge of the mechanical integrity (crush strength) of the pebbles is important for a successful design of a breeder blanket. In this paper, we present the experimental results of the crush (failure) loads for spherical OSi pebbles of different diameters ranging from 250um to 800um. The ultimate failure load for each size shows a Weibull distribution. Furthermore, the mean crush load increases with increase in pebble diameter. It is also observed that the level of opacity of the pebble influences the crush load significantly. The experimental data presented in this paper and the associated analysis could possibly help us to develop a framework for simulating a crushable polydisperse pebble assembly using discrete ...