“…Numerous investigations have been carried out during the past decades to understand the fracture behavior of multilayer actuators. Theoretical models have been developed for fracture mechanics analysis of multilayer ceramics based on the electrostrictive theory [34,43,99,131,137], the linear theory of piezoelectricity [38,67,98,126,139], and nonlinear approaches taking into account the ferroelectric and ferroelastic behaviors [24,53,72,146]. Using these models, the electromechanical fields can be analyzed near the electrode edge and some design criteria regarding the geometry of the actuators and electrodes can be proposed to reduce the probability of fracture from the electrode edge.…”