A micropolar phase-field model for size-dependent electro-mechanical fracture

This article proposes a micropolar phase-field model for size-dependent brittle fracture in solids under electro-mechanical loading conditions. Considering displacement, micro-rotation, electric potential, and phase-field variable as the kinematic descriptors and employing the virtual power principle, we derive a set of coupled governing partial differential equations (PDEs) for size-dependent solids. Invoking the first and second laws of thermodynamics, we determine the constitutive relations for the thermodynamic fluxes. Carrying out the finite element implementation of the derived governing PDEs using the open-source Gridap package in Julia, we demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed phase-field model through a few representative numerical examples. Especially the importance of the proposed model in incorporating the effect of relative rotation, i.e., the difference between macro- and micro-rotation, on the response of solids under electro-mechanical loading is shown that may not be possible with the existing non-local models such as strain-gradient or couple-stress approaches. To capture the experimentally observed size effects in solids under electro-mechanical loading, the proposed model does not demand higher-order continuity of the field variables, unlike a typically used strain gradient model. To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed model, we have compared our results against demanding experimental and numerical benchmark results available in the literature. We provide a parametric study to unravel the effect of different micropolar material parameters on the electro-mechanical response of a brittle solid. Interestingly, the proposed micropolar model is less sensitive to the phase-field length scale than the conventional non-polar phase-field models. [Display omitted] •A micropolar PFM for size-dependent electro-mechanical fracture is proposed.•The model can adeptly predict experimentally observed fracture in PZT-4 specimens.•A parametric study unravels the effect of micro-polarity on fracture responses.•Lenient on smoothness requirement of field variables, unlike strain-gradient models.•Micropolarity reduces phase-field length scale sensitivity and boosts FE convergence.