“…According to fracture mechanics, the efficient stress intensity factor (K Ieff ) can be expressed as the sum of the applied stress intensity factor (K Ia ) and the additive stress intensity factor decided by the 90° domain switching (ΔK I ), which is written as 40 Based on a mode of small scale domain switching, the shielding effect by domain switch is scaled by a key dimensionless group of material parameters 41 where Ω is the dimensionless function depended on the domain orientation, V f the volume fraction of switched domains, Y the Young's modulus, ε sp (also written as γ s ) the spontaneous switching strain (in a tetragonal material with domains randomly distributed, the maximum possible value of ε sp , is given by ε sp = (2/3)(c/a-1), ν the Poisson's ratio, P s the saturated polarization, E c the coercive field. If assumed that K Ia is equal to the apparent fracture toughness (K IC ) while K Ieff approximates to the intrinsic fracture toughness (K I0 ), and then we have For PZT-NC ceramics, ν = ~0.3, the ferroelectric loops measurement has given the values of P s = 28.02 μC/cm 2 and E c = 10.03 kV/cm.…”