Study of interface influence on crack growth: Application to Solid Oxide Fuel Cell like materials design

In the present work a mesh free method is used to study the effect of interfaces on the crack propagation path in multilayered like Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) materials. The partition of unity principle was introduced to model the crack tip singularity. The penalty method is used to model the materials discontinuity along the interfaces. The stress intensity factors (SIF) were computed using the interaction integral. The mesh free method is implemented and verified using results from the literature. A parametric study of crack propagation in mono-layer and bi-layer material is conducted. Finally an application to SOFC unit shows that crack initiated in the anode propagates towards the anode/electrolyte interface.