Stress intensity factor of interfacial crack between metal-base ceramic coating and steel

The three-point bending fracture mechanics experiments and finite element analysis had been used to compute the complex stress intensity factor (K)of the interfacial crack between LX88A coating and Q345 steel.It was found that the K-dominant zone exist near the crack tip only for some specimens.The result indicates that K_C can not be used as the single fracture parameter to evaluate the interface fracture behavior for three-point bending specimen. Therefore, it is necessary that the elastic-plastic fracture mechanics and probabilistic fracture mechanics are used to analyze such interface cracks.