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Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

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Controlled crack arrest in brittle thin lms: The eect of embedded voids
Ling Liu, Xi Chen *
Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University, 500 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027-6699, USA
Received 3 April 2008; received in revised form 15 August 2008; accepted 17 August 2008
Available online 25 September 2008

Abstract
Controlled crack arrest is useful for controlling self-assembled crack paths in micro-fabrication, as well as limiting crack length in
toughening composites. Compliant inclusions and voids can eectively attract and arrest cracks, thereby controlling the crack pattern.
Analytical stress solution indicates that when the inclusion is about 10 times more compliant than its matrix, it may be eectively modeled as a void. The crack arrest capability is expressed in terms of the critical angle of the initial crack path, as the inclusion size, shape,
crack origin and lm properties are varied. Simple criteria are established to maximize the crack arrest ability and to determine the critical crack angle. The eectiveness of using dierent void patterns to arrest cracks is also explored. The results are useful for both controlling and restricting cracks in brittle thin lms, through the utilization of compliant or void-like inclusions as crack arrestors.
2008 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Thin lms; Fracture; Toughness; Kinetics self-organization & patterning; Simulation

1. Introduction
Thin lms are often subjected to residual stresses inherited from deposition and/or thermal expansion mismatch
with substrates. In many technologically important thin
lms, large equibiaxial tensile stress is developed as the system is cooled from an elevated deposition temperature or
as the lm is dried; when such tensile stress exceeds a critical value in brittle thin lms (e.g. NiAl lm on Si substrate
[1] or SiO2 lm on Si wafer [2]), fracture occurs and various
channel crack patterns have been observed [3], including
mud cracks [4], spiral cracks [5] and sinusoidal cracks [6].
Conventionally, cracks are regarded as a threat to system integrity and should be avoided if possible. However,
controlled fracture in thin lms may also be useful: in
recent years, mechanical self-assembly based on ordered
crack patterns has emerged as a competitive approach for
fabricating nanowires and nanochannels [2,710]. In
essence, various crack initiators and arrestors are embedded in a lm, whose shape and alignment are adjusted so

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 212 854 3787; fax: +1 212 854 6267.
E-mail address: xichen@civil.columbia.edu (X. Chen).

as to guide the spontaneous formation of a highly ordered,

stress-assisted fracture pattern. Since the typical crack
opening (gap) is on the order of nanometers, a network
of nanochannel is formed. Based on such a template, various deposition methods may be employed to ll the crack
channels with a dierent material. Upon removal of the
original lm material, the llers become ordered nanowire
pattern [2,9]. Compared to the conventional photolithography, such mechanical self-assembly is arguably more economical and ecient, and it also involves rich mechanics
problems.
One of the key challenges of the self-assembly of fracture is to guide the crack growth along an expected path.
Various types of crack initiators and arrestors may be
employed [2], which are regular-shaped dent-like features
(e.g. square, circular, annular, heart, etc.) patterned on
the substrate surface prior to lm deposition, stressing
and cracking. In essence, the crack initiators and arrestors
in these experiments are voids (vacant inclusions)
embedded in thin lms. While there are various ways to
initiate cracks along a given path (e.g. using a void or inclusion with sharp tips [2], or applying pyramidal indentation
to nucleate radial cracks [11]), a comprehensive study on
the controlled crack arrest is still scarce. How large is the

1359-6454/$34.00 2008 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2008.08.038

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

inuence zone of an arrestor to eectively arrest cracks

passing through its surrounding area? Is there a shape of
crack arrestor that is more eective than others? Since initial defects are inevitable in thin lms, with a certain error
of the orientation of the initiated crack, how will the arrestor eectively rectify the crack path and how much will the
arrestor tolerate the initial error? These questions, along
with the inuences of the size of crack arrestors and material properties, will be explored through a systematic study
and the ndings could provide useful guidelines for
mechanical self-assembly with controlled fracture patterns.
In addition to controlling cracks, compliant inclusions
(such as rubber or metal particles) have long been embedded in brittle matrix (such as ceramics or glass) so as to
enhance the fracture toughness [1215]. Recently, microcapsules lled with self-healing agents are incorporated
into brittle matrix to become self-healing polymers
[16,17]. When a crack passes through such compliant inclusions, the embedded microcapsule ruptures to release selfhealing agent into the crack channel. In case the stiness
of the embedded phase is much smaller than the surrounding matrix, the compliant inclusion may be eectively modeled as a void. Again, the interaction between the crack
path and the characteristics of a crack arrestor is critical.
Besides the questions proposed above for a single crack
arrestor, when multiple crack arrestors are employed, it is
interesting to explore whether an ordered pattern or a random mixture would give rise to the best crack stopping or
controlling probability. This is another objective of the
present paper which would provide useful insight on how
to eectively constrain the averaged crack length by
employing arrays of crack arrestors, thereby enhancing
the system integrity.
In this paper, we carry out a theoretical and numerical
study on the controlled crack propagation and arrest in
brittle thin lms, focusing on the eect of embedded voids.
In order to reduce the computational eort, we adopt a
shear lag model [5] to describe the in-plane deformation
of thin lms such that all eld equations are approximated
in two-dimensions. The model is solved numerically via the
extended nite element method (XFEM) [18], which is
powered by multiple enrichment functions around discontinuities, and it is a versatile numerical tool to solve crack
propagation problems without remeshing [19]. Appropriate
adoption of enrichments can extend the XFEM to study
other discontinuities, such as inclusions [20] and dislocations [21].
In Section 2, we describe the shear lag model and its discretized form for numerical solution via XFEM, following
the work by Liang et al. [4]. Based on the shear lag model,
new closed-form solutions are derived in Section 3 for the
stress eld around a circular inclusion embedded in a thin
lm. Proper bounds are deduced such that when the stiness of the inclusion is much smaller than the brittle
matrix, the inclusion can be eectively modeled as a void.
Such simplication enables us to focus on the eect of
voids on controlled crack arrest in the following sections,

6215

which is consistent with many previous experimental works

on crack self-assembly and control. The crack arrest characteristics by single and patterned voids are discussed in
Sections 4 and 5, respectively, where the inclusion shape/
size, lm/substrate properties and initial crack paths are
all varied in large ranges, to address the key questions proposed above.
2. Model and computation method
Fig. 1 is a schematic of the model under investigation. A
brittle elastic lm (with Youngs modulus E and Poissons
ratio v) of thickness h is bonded to a substrate and subjected to a far-eld equibiaxial stresses r0, which may be
regarded as prestress (or residual stress) due to intrinsic
stress (e.g. epitaxial stress, evaporation, vacancy annihilation, or other stresses associated during the deposition process) and/or that due to thermal expansion mismatch
between lm and substrate. We assume that r0 is suciently high to sustain crack development and growth at
all times until the crack is arrested by the arrestor (which
is a void or a ductile and compliant toughening phase).
Once initiated, a channel crack in the lm may be attracted
to an embedded arrestor so as to release the strain energy.
A circular vacant inclusion (void) is shown in Fig. 1 as a
representative example of crack arrestors, although its
characteristics can be varied.
Owing to the bonding between lm and substrate, the
deformation associated with crack formation and extension in the lm is expected to inuence the substrate via
their interface, and thus the substrate tends to impede the
crack opening due to its in-plane resistance. In the shear
lag model proposed by Xia and Hutchinson [5], such interaction is characterized as a shear stress at the interface:

Fig. 1. Schematic of the model: a crack is attracted by a vacant inclusion

in a biaxially stretched thin lm bonded to a substrate.

6216

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

sa kua

where all Greek subscripts in this paper vary from 1 to 2. k

is a spring constant which can be calibrated by the energy
release rate of a semi-innite isolated crack [5], and ua denotes the in-plane displacement of the thin lm. By relating
the substrate resistance to the lm deformation via Eq. (1),
the thin lm can be modeled as an elastic isotropic solid under plane-stress condition without explicitly incorporating
the substrate. The equilibrium for the lm can be expressed
by
rab;b sa =h

where h denotes the lm thickness. The stress eld rab is

composed of two parts, one caused by the inclusion and
crack advancement and the other caused by the intrinsic
lm stress, i.e.
rab

E
1  veab vecc dab  r0 dab
1  v2

where dab is the Kronecker delta. Assuming small deformation, the associated in-plane strain components are
ua;b ub;a
4
eab
2
Combining Eqs. (1)(4), the Navier equation for the elastic
problem can be written as


1
1
2
5
ua;bb
ub;ba ua
L
21 v
21  v
q
is introduced as a reference length that
where L Eh
k
could be used for normalization purposes, and it contains
important information of lm/substrate properties and
thus a critical variable governing the crack propagation.
According to Xia and Hutchinson [5], L is typically of
the same order as the lm thickness h.
The discretization of the eld equations using the
XFEM approach is similar to that described in Ref. [4],
except that an elastic substrate is considered in the present
paper instead of an elastic underlayer over a rigid substrate. The discretized governing equation takes the following form:
Ku f
Z
Z
k
T
B DBdX
BT BdX
K
h X
X
Z
f  BT r0 dX

6
7
8

where K denotes the system stiness matrix, u the vector of

nodal displacements, f the force vector, D the constitutive
matrix for plane-stress problems, B the straindisplacement
matrix with XFEM enrichments, B the shape function matrix incorporating XFEM enrichments, and X the computational domain. In Eq. (7), the second term on the righthand side implies that the bonding with substrate in fact
strengthens the lm in resisting in-plane deformations.
The crack propagation path is solved incrementally. At
each numerical increment, the stress eld is computed and

the crack extension path is determined following the maximum hoop stress law [18]
 
hp
2K II =K I
q

9
tan
2
2
1 1 8K II =K I
where hp denotes the angle between the last crack segment
and the new putative crack segment, KI and KII are the
mode I and mode II stress intensity factors at the crack
tip, respectively. Note that the crack propagation rule described in Eq. (9) is dimensionless and thus it does not
explicitly depend on the magnitude of the lm stress r0.
When results are expressed in dimensionless terms, as long
as we assume that r0 is suciently large or the lm is sufciently brittle, the magnitude of r0 would not aect the
crack path or the controlled crack arrest characteristics.
3. Fundamental stress solution for a circular compliant/void
inclusion
In essence, when an inclusion is embedded in a lm, the
stress eld near the inclusion is disturbed and such stress
concentration decays away from the inclusion. The local
stress eld exerts a large inuence on the path of a crack
passing nearby the inclusion and the crack tends to seek
a path that releases as much strain energy as possible. As
a rst step, it is important to understand the stress inuence
zone of an inclusion as well as its dependency on inclusion/
matrix materials and geometries. In order to take advantage of axisymmetry, we consider an isolated circular
inclusion of radius a embedded in an innite lm. The
shear lag model is used to describe the eect of substrate.
Youngs modulus is assumed to be E for the matrix and
Ei for the inclusion; the dierence in Poissons ratio is
neglected for simplicity. In addition, we assume the prestress in the lm layer is linearly related with the Youngs
modulus, i.e. the matrix and the inclusion are subjected
to equibiaxial stresses of r0 and r0Ei/E, respectively.
In a polar coordinate system where r is the radial coordinate, Eq. (5) becomes


ur;r
1
1
 2 2 ur 0
10
ur;rr
r
r
L
for both inclusion and matrix, where u(r) denotes the radial
displacement. Correspondingly, the radial stress rR and the
hoop stress rH take the following forms, respectively:
i
e h
v
E
rR
ur;r ur e
11
r0
2
r
1v


e
ur
E
r0

vur
12
rH
;r e
1  v2 r
e and e
where E
r 0 equal to E and r0 outside the inclusion,
e and e
and E
r 0 equal to Ei and r0Ei/E inside the inclusion,
respectively.
We denote the displacement, radial stress, and hoop
stress within the inclusion (r 6 a) as ui, riR and riH, respectively, and the subscript i is dropped in the solution of eld

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

variables in the inclusion. The following boundary conditions are imposed: the displacement is zero at the center
of the inclusion, ui(0) = 0; both the radial stress and displacement should be continuous at the inclusionmatrix
interface, ui(a) = u(a) and riR(a) = rR(a); and the displacement remains zero at innity, u(1) = 0. By imposing these
constraints, the stress eld outside the inclusion is solved as


Ei  1
arI 1 
aK 0 
ar I 1 
aK 1 
ar  vI 1 
aK 1 
ar
1
rQEi ;
a;r


Ei  1vI 1 
aK 1 
ar v
arI 1 
aK 0 
ar  I 1 
aK 1 
ar
1
rH Ei ; a;r r0
rQEi ; 
a;r
I 0 
QEi ;a;r aI 1 aK 0 a I 1 
aK 1 
a  vI 1 
aK 1 
a Ei a
aK 1 
a
rR Ei ;a;r r0

 Ei I 1 aK 1 a vEi I 1 
aK 1 
a

13

where 
a a=L; r r=a; Ei Ei =E, and In(x) and Kn(x) denote the Bessel function of the rst kind and the Bessel
function of the second kind, respectively. It is readily seen
that both stress components are functions of the Youngs
modulus ratio Ei , the normalized inclusion radius a, and
the normalized radial coordinate r. As will be discussed later, 
a a=L is also a critical factor controlling the crack arrest. In this section, we only focus on the inuence of the
stiness ratio between the two phases, so as to search for
a bound within which a compliant inclusion may be modeled as a void.
Fig. 2 plots the stress solutions for four Ei (0.5, 0.1, 0.01
and 0) and two representative a/L (1 and 10). Ei 0 is
intended to mimic a vacant inclusion (void). It is shown that
the normalized stress gets closer to 1 with larger Ei , indicating that a lower contrast between the two materials is closer
to the homogenous condition (since the lm stress should be
uniformly r0 if no mismatch presents between the inclusion
and the matrix). This limit can be derived from Eq. (13),
where both stress components equal to the far-eld stresses
1.5

6217

r0 when Ei goes to 1. On the other hand, the stress values

show only small variations as Ei becomes lower than 0.1,
and almost no variation when Ei < 0:01. This suggests that
a compliant inclusion satisfying Ei < 0:01 is equivalent to a
void in terms of the resulting stress eld. Since this stress
eld as revealed later is inherently relevant to the crack path
and arrest, for simplicity we could eectively replace a compliant inclusion (with Ei < 0:01) by a void of the same shape,
and such simplication is consistent with many previous
experiments, e.g. using compliant particles to toughen
ceramics [1215], using self-healing capsules to enhance
fracture resistance [16,17], and using dent-like features to
arrest cracks in self-assembly [2]. Moreover, one could
extend such simplication to an upper bound of about
Ei < 0:1, which tends to bring about approximately 20%
deviation to the stress eld by comparing a void with a compliant inclusion; and the resulting crack arrest capability is
not to be signicantly aected, which is veried by our crack
growth simulations.
Based on these arguments, in the following sections we
focus on the eects of void-like crack arrestors, and the ndings can be readily extended to compliant inclusions. We also
note that the stress variation around a void is more signicant than that around a solid inclusion (Fig. 2), indicating
that when other parameters are xed, the crack arrest capability using a vacant inclusion is the best (compared with
using solid inclusions). Thus, the study of crack arrest characteristics using void-like inclusions could yield an important theoretical limit, as well as of potential practical value.
In the case of a compliant inclusion with Ei < 0:01 or a
vacant inclusion, the closed form stress solutions can be
achieved either by deducing Eq. (13) with Ei 0, or by
solving Eq. (10) for matrix only with boundary conditions
u = 0(r = 1) and rR = 0(r = a). The results are


arK 0 ar 1  vK 1 ar
r R r0
1
14
raK 0 a  K 1 a vK 1 a


arvK 0 ar  1  vK 1 ar
1
15
rH r0
raK 0 a  K 1 a vK 1 a

/ 0

1.0

Ei /E = 0.5 0.1

0.5

0.01

0
H, a/L=1
H, a/L=10
R, a/L=10

0.0
1.0

R, a/L=1

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

r/a
Fig. 2. The analytical stress eld outside a circular inclusion, when the
lm is subjected to equibiaxial tensile stress. Multiple material stiness
ratios Ei Ei =E are examined to explore the dependence of the stress eld
on the elastic mismatch ( Ei 0 represents a void inclusion). The results of
Ei 0:01 and Ei 0 almost overlap, indicating that with Ei < 0:01 a
compliant inclusion could be eectively modeled as a void.

In this case, stresses are dependent on a/L and r/L.

Solutions Eqs. (14) and (15) are plotted in Fig. 3 where
a/L is varied between 1 and 3.5. The radial stress rR starts
from 0 at the void boundary and gradually arises to r0,
although the speed of arising is quicker if a/L is larger; in
other words, when other conditions are xed, the radial
stress approaches rR more quickly if the lm is more compliant or thinner. The hoop stress rH also converges to r0
far away from the inclusion, but the trend is distinct with
respect to dierent a/L. When a/L is relatively small, rH
is above r0, and when a/L is larger than about 3.1, rH is
below r0. Such contrasting trends are caused by the nonzero Poissons ratio v (which is kept as 0.3 in the current
study), although the hoop strain eH is always positive
(the inclusion is enlarged upon prestress). A good match
is found between the stress elds obtained from the
numerical solution via XFEM and the analytical study

6218

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

1.5
r

/ 0

1.0

0.5

R, a/L=1

R, a/L=10

H, a/L=1

H, a/L=10

R, a/L=3.16

R, a/L=1, numerical

H, a/L=3.16

H, a/L=1, numerical

0.0
1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

r/a
Fig. 3. The analytical stress eld near a circular void embedded in a thin
lm. Numerical XFEM solutions for the case of a/L = 1 are shown in
squares. The arrows show the boundaries of the extended inuence zone
(ae/a) for crack arrest in various cases.

for a/L = 1, which also veries the numerical algorithm

adopted in this paper.
An important observation from Fig. 2 is that, as both
stress components decay away from the void boundary
(r = a), there seems to exist a region outside which the
stress variation is relatively insignicant. This suggests that
the stress concentration near an inclusion has a limited
inuence zone. In Fig. 3, the radius of the inuence zone
is found to decrease with the increase of a/L, which will
be connected to the crack arrest capability discussed below.
4. Crack arrest by individual voids
4.1. Critical angle for crack arrest
We rst consider the interaction between a crack path
and a representative circular void as sketched in Fig. 1.
With reference to Fig. 4a, an inclusion of radius a is cen-

tered at point C and a short crack segment is initiated from

point O. The distance between C and O is d, and the inclination
angle of the initial crack segment is h with respect to
!
OC . One end of the initial crack is pinned at O (e.g. by a
crack initiator), and the other end is an active tip to propagate forward according to the XFEM simulation and the
shear lag model described earlier.
Three primary dimensionless variables govern the problem under investigation: a/L, d/a, and h. The rst one is
related with the inclusion size and lm/substrate properties; the second variable is the normalized separation
between the crack initiator and arrestor; and the third variable describes the initial crack path which is employed to
study the eect of crack arrestors. Note that without the
inclusion, in a homogeneous lm the crack would propagate straightforward along its initial path. As a theoretical
study, the following discussions are dedicated to establishing the relationships among these governing dimensionless
quantities, and the results may guide the microstructural
design of voids as crack arrestors.
At typical values of a/L = 1 and d/a = 6, from Fig. 4a it
can be readily seen that the crack path is strongly inuenced by the arrestor and the crack tends to be attracted
by the circular void; depending on the initial inclination
angle h, some cracks (with smaller h) are arrested by the
inclusion while others (with larger h) escape. Therefore, a
critical angle hcr must exist for any given combination of
a/L and d/a, below which the crack is arrested and beyond
which the crack may escape. From controlled crack arrest
point of view, it is often desirable to maximize hcr so as to
arrest more cracks to enhance system integrity; a large hcr
also means that the system can tolerate larger errors in
the crack initiation during mechanical self-assembly, such
that cracks are easier to converge to the desired destination
dictated by the crack arrestor. The critical angle hcr is,
therefore, adopted as a quantitative measure of the crack
arrest capability in the following analysis.
For given values of a/it L and d/a hcr, can be evaluated
through a searching process where h is varied within its

cr

d
d/a =
=

28
26
30
29

4
5
6
8
10

a/L =
0.1
1
3.16
10
100

O
Fig. 4. The crack paths in various conditions: (a). a/L = 1, d/a = 6 and h is varied to search for the critical angle hcr; (b). Critical cracks for a/L = 1 and
varying d/a show the inuence of crack origin; (c). Critical cracks for d/a =6 and varying a/L show the inuence of inclusion size.

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

allowable range (from 0 to 180), and the critical angle is

identied as the largest angle at which the crack is arrested
by the void. Note that the resolution of the variation of h is
1 in the present numerical searching procedure, and thus
the maximum error of hcr is about 1. In the illustrative
case shown in Fig. 4a, hcr = 28.
The crack arrest capability is examined with respect to
varying d/a and a/L. In the present study, d/a is varied
between 4 and 10. Such a range is regarded as sucient
to reveal a general rule governing the critical crack orientations, discussed below. The range of variation of a/L is
much larger since L, as well as its component parameters,
E, h and k, can vary in large ranges. In the present study,
a/L is varied between 0.01 and 1000 from which proper
bounds of hcr can be deduced.
Fig. 5 plots the variation of hcr with respect to d/a and a/
L. At a constant a/L, hcr is always larger for smaller d/a;
that is, a crack initiated closer to the void is more likely
to be arrested. On the other hand, when d/a is xed, only
within a small range of a/L (from about 1 to 30 for allit
a/it L studied) will the resulting hcr experience a signicant
change; outside such range two plateaus hcr of are identied
as its upper and lower limits, respectively. This implies that
the maximum crack arrest capability could be achieved for
circular inclusions when a/L is smaller than about 1. In
terms of the crack path control or the error tolerance of
the crack initiation, one should choose a/L smaller than 1
for better system performance. In terms of crack length
control (for safety consideration), it is desirable to further
reduce a on the basis of a/L < 1, such that the crack path
(from initiation to arrest) can be shorter.
4.2. Extended inuence zone for crack arrest
We now examine in detail the eects of d/a and a/L on
hcr. When a/L is xed at 1, Fig. 4b shows the propagation
paths of critical cracks with varied d/a. Here, the critical
60

d/a =

40

cr (degree)

4
5
6
8
10

50

cr

30

20

10

0
0.01

0.1

10

100

1000

a/L
Fig. 5. The variation of critical angle hcr as a function of a/L and d/a. A
sharp transition domain and two plateaus are found with respect to a/L.

6219

crack path refers to the crack whose initial angle is hcr.

Although all cracks are arrested at the right side of the
inclusion, the ending (nal arrested) point does not seem
to follow any clear trend, due to the complicated interaction between the stress elds at the crack tip and around
the inclusion. In fact, as shown in Fig. 4a, even a variation
of two degrees (26 and 28) in the initial orientation could
signicantly aect the nal arrested position.
Nevertheless, despite the variation of d/a, when we
extend the critical cracks along their initial directions, it
is found that all such extended lines share a common property: the distances from the center of the inclusion to these
extended lines are almost the same (Fig. 6a). In other
words, the extensions of all critical cracks are tangential
to a shared circular region, and it is applicable to all values
of d/a under investigation. In the example of Fig. 6a where
a/L = 1, the radius of the shared circular region (ae) is
about three times a, which may be regarded as an extended
inuence zone for the potential crack arrest of a void-like
inclusion. For any crack, if the extension of its initial segment passes through such extended inuence zone, it will
be arrested by the void. This concept is further conrmed
for othera/L values.
The identication of the extended inuence zone can
help to determine hcr without repeating the numerical
searching procedure stated above. As illustrated in
Fig. 6b, given the extended inuence zone of radius ae,
the critical angle can be approximated by sin1(ae/d) for
a crack initiated with the separation of d from the inclusion
center. The ratio ae/a of depends on a/L (Fig. 6c), following
the same trend as hcr (Fig. 5). Hence, ae/d is another
parameter characterizing the crack arrest capability, and
it should be related to the stress inuence zone derived in
Section 3.
According to the stress eld solution around a circular
void (Fig. 3), while the radial stress is zero at the void
boundary, the hoop stress is nonzero, which leads to stress
concentration near the void. A crack would therefore prefer to cut the lm near the void boundary in order to partially release the stress concentration; this is the physical
reason why a crack could be attracted and arrested by a
vacant inclusion in thin lms. Once a crack feels the perturbation of the stress eld caused by the void, it would start
to interact with the void, change its propagation direction,
and nally be arrested. In Fig. 3, where the analytical stress
eld around an isolated void (without crack) is given for
selected a/L values, we also use arrows to denote the corresponding values of ae/a taken from the XFEM crack arrest
simulations (Fig. 6c). It is found from Fig. 3 that the size of
the extended inuence zone for crack arrest, ae/a, is closely
related with the stress variation near the void; basically,
beyond the stress perturbation with respect to r0 is less
prominent. Such consistency veries that a crack can be
attracted only when it feels the stress uctuation caused
by the inclusion.
The eect of a/L on the stress eld (Fig. 3) is very similar
to what it does to the critical angle and the size of the

6220

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

Extended influence zone

3.0

ae

2.5

ae / a

ae

2.0

1.5

d
1.0
0.01

0.1

10

100

1000

a/L
Estimated cr
Origin of crack
Fig. 6. The extended inuence zone: (a). When the critical cracks in Fig. 4b (e.g. the green dash line shown here) are extended along their initial
orientations (e.g. the green solid line shown here), such extended lines are tangential to an extended inuence zone centered at the void center; (b). An
empirical method for determining hcr: from any crack origin, draw a line tangential to the extended inuence zone and another through the inclusion
center, and the angle between the two lines approximates the critical angle; (c). The variation of the size of the extended inuence zone (ae/a) with respect
to a/L.(For interpretation of color mentioned in this gure the reader is referred to the web version of the article.)

extended inuence zone. Fig. 4c shows the extension paths

of critical cracks for varied a/L and xed d/a of 6. When
a/L is small, the stress varies very slowly from the void
(Fig. 3) and hence the inuence zone is large, and the crack
immediately feels the presence of the void and starts to
adjust its direction, and the crack path is curved throughout its growth. At a larger a/L, the crack tends to keep
straight for longer distance before it is turned toward the
inclusion after it feels the stress eld of the void. Again,
when other parameters are xed, systems with smaller
a/L have better crack arrest capabilities.
While the inuence zone is responsible for the initial curvature of the crack path, from the cracking path point of
view, the transition from a straight crack to a curved crack
under equibiaxial tension is always associated with a drop
in the stress intensity factor KI at the crack tip [5]; however,
a crack should always seek the maximum energy release
rate corresponding to mode I [3,22]. In order to maintain
KI during the straight-to-curved transition, the ratio
between the radius of curvature of the curved crack and
the reference length L needs to be kept above a certain level
[5]. Consequently, with xed a, larger a/L implies smaller L
and therefore increased crack curvature. This can be conrmed in Fig. 4c, where for larger a/L, the ending curvature
of the crack path (near the inclusion) is quite large.

that other shapes of inclusions may result in better capabilities of crack arrest due to the stress singularity caused by
sharp structural features. Indeed, several other shapes of
inclusions were used in [2] although their advantages were
not explored experimentally.
In order to clarify this problem, for representative combinations of d/a and a/L, we compare the critical angle for a
circular void with those for square and heart-shaped inclusions. All inclusions have the same area, and d is measured
with respect to the geometrical center of inclusions. Results
of hcr are shown in Table 1. No prominent dierence is
observed among dierent shapes; the largest dierence in
an individual case is only about three degrees. For all cases
of d/a and a/L studied, it seems no particular shape could
be universally more eective than the other two. Moreover,
the conclusion holds even if the relative orientation of

Table 1
The dependence of the critical angle hcr on dierent shapes of inclusions
(a/L, d/a)

hcr
Inclusion shape

(10, 4)

(3.16, 4)

(1, 4)

(0.1, 4)

(1, 6)

(1, 8)

Circle

22

29

46

50

28

21

4.3. Eect of void shape

Square

21

31

45

51

29

22

While the crack arrest ability of a circular void-like

inclusion has been experimentally demonstrated [2] and
numerically discussed in the present paper, it is arguable

Heart

23

30

44

53

29

21

Various combinations of a/L and d/a are examined.

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

inclusions with respect to the crack origin is varied. Hence,

the circular inclusion is recommended thanks to its axisymmetry and the ability to attract cracks from all directions.

Square

6221

Triangular

Random

5. Crack arrest by patterned voids

Any inclusion discussed in the last section can be considered as a toughening or healing phase to strengthen lms,
which could eectively arrest cracks. It is interesting to
compare the crack arrest capability of dierent inclusion
patterns, in terms of the mean or median crack length
before cracks are eectively stopped and such a parameter
is directly relevant to the system integrity. Although the
real problem may involve three-dimensional patterns of
spherical inclusions, in this paper we study two-dimensional patterns of circular voids so as to gain some useful
insights. Three patterns are studied as shown in Fig. 7:
square, triangular, and random; the rst two are regular
arrangements. For all cases, the volume fraction of inclusion, V, and the void size, a, are supposed to be known
in advance; for a combination of V and a, the separations
between inclusions can be determined for the square and
triangular patterns; in the case of random pattern, inclusions are scattered randomly with given V and a.
Two indexes, the mean crack length and the median
crack length1, are evaluated based on a two-step Monte
Carlo simulation routine for all patterned inclusion systems
under investigation, in order to quantify their abilities of
containing cracks. In the rst step, a number of sample systems are generated, each with a randomly initiated crack
(and randomly distributed inclusions for the case of random pattern). The crack is assumed to be randomly placed
outside the inclusion domains and its initial orientation is
also random. The second step is to identify the length of
the arrested crack for each sample system, and derive the
mean and median crack lengths for a given pattern and a
volume fraction V. As mentioned earlier, if the initial orientation of a crack can intersect the extended inuence zone
of an inclusion, it would be eectively arrested by that
inclusion (Fig. 7). We therefore adopt this simple criterion
to determine crack arrest, and the crack length is approximated by the separation between the crack origin and the
inclusion center. Note that the current evaluation of crack
length subjects to errors from three sources: rst, the current approach neglects interactions between neighboring
inclusions, so the criterion of crack arrest derived for individual inclusions may be biased; second, real crack paths
are always curved, not straight as in our approximation;
third, although a particular inclusion is not able to arrest
a crack, it may change its curvature as the crack passes
by, which may inuence crack arrest characteristics. Never1

As will be elaborated below, cracks of very long lengths are observed in

thin lms containing sparse and regularly patterned voids (e.g. V < 0.01,
square or triangular pattern), leading to non-normal distribution of the
arrested crack length and in some cases the standard deviations may be on
the same order as the average values.

Initial crack
orientation

Approximated
crack length

Fig. 7. The three patterns of inclusions and the evaluation of crack length
with the help of the extended inuence zone.

theless, such errors should be of the same order for all patterns under discussion, and thus the current approach
should still yield a qualitative ranking among the three
patterns.
In principle, the mean crack length varies with respect to
V and a/L. From the study on an individual void, a representative a/L = 1 is sucient for maximizing the crack
arrest probability and thus this value is xed. As V and
the void pattern are varied, Fig. 8 shows the results of
the mean and median crack length normalized by a.
Indeed, the two evaluation indexes not only give results
with dierent absolute values, but more importantly, also
rank the three patterns in distinct orders. According to
the index of mean crack length, the random pattern is superior in constraining crack length when V is lower than
about 5%; otherwise, regular patterns take over. When
the median index is adopted, however, the random pattern
turns out to be inferior to the other two patterns in all
ranges of V. These contrasting results, analyzed below, suggest that depending on the goal to be pursued for the crack
arresting system, dierent inclusion pattern may be chosen.
For example, for the sake of the system integrity, it may be
sometimes more desirable to limit the averaged length of all
possible cracks, or to control the possibility (e.g. 50%) of
letting the crack length to be below a certain threshold.
In order to more clearly reveal the mechanism, distribution maps of the normalized crack length are shown in
Fig. 9. Here, the x-axis represents various ranges of the
crack length, and the y-axis is their probability. Two cases
are investigated, one with lower V = 0.01 and the other
with higher V = 0.05. According to Fig. 8 and 9, the ranking of mean crack length among void patterns is distinct
when the volume fraction is changed. However, in terms
of the distribution of crack lengths, no signicant dierence

6222

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

due to the local non-uniformity of inclusions, the possibility of getting cracks of medium sizes increases for random
pattern, which could signicantly trade o its advantage
over regular patterns in long cracks. As shown in Fig. 8,
the random pattern yields longer median crack length
within the ranges of V studied in this paper. The median
of the regular patterns, on the other hand, is less sensitive
to a small number of very large values of crack lengths,
and thus the median may be employed a better reference
value than the average length (although the later is also
useful).

90
Mean, Triangular
Mean, Square
Mean, Random

Normalized crack length

60
30
0

Median, Triangular
Median, Square
Median, Random

40

20

6. Conclusion
0
0.00

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.10

Volume fraction of inclusions, V

Fig. 8. The mean and median crack lengths (normalized by the inclusion
size a) as functions of the void volume fraction, V, for dierent void
patterns.
1.0

High V, Random
High V, Triangular
High V, Square
Low V, Random
Low V, Triangular
Low V, Square

Distribution

0.9

0.8
0.2

0.1

0.0
0-20
0-80

20-40
40-60
60-80
8080-160
160-240
240-320
320-

Normalized crack length

Fig. 9. The distribution of the crack length normalized by for low
V = 0.01 and high V = 0.05. Each bar shows the percentage of cracks
within the indicated length range among all sample cracks.

is observed among these three patterns. The overall trend is

that the randomly arranged voids lead to more cracks with
medium length, while the regular arrangements of voids
perform better in conning cracks to short length but some
very long cracks could be produced.
When a regular pattern is employed, there is a small
chance that the crack path may be initiated exactly along
the principal directions of the pattern and theoretically,
the crack would go innitely long without being arrested
by any inclusion. Therefore, within a Monte Carlo simulation, sometimes very long cracks may be produced if their
initial path is very close to the principal directions. These
cracks tend to increase the resulting mean crack length as
well as the variation of the crack length for regular patterns, and such deciency is more prominent when V is
very low. In contrast, for the random pattern, the probability of having very long cracks is much smaller, leading to a
shorter mean crack length in the case of low V. However,

In this paper, controlled crack arrest in brittle thin lms

via void-like individual inclusions and inclusion patterns is
studied using XFEM. A shear lag model is employed to
mimic the eect of the substrate. Analytical solution of
the stress eld near an isolated circular inclusion is derived,
based on which we conclude that a compliant inclusion
may be eectively modeled by a void when the inclusion
is about 10100 times more compliant than its matrix. By
simplifying the inclusion into a void, the studies in this
paper also provide an important theoretical bound to general solid inclusions, since when everything else is xed,
using a void can better attract or guide cracks than using
other llers for crack arrestors.
When a crack initiates in a thin lm embedding a circular void (Fig. 4a), two dimensionless variables are
employed to characterize the system: the normalized void
size, a/L, and the normalized separation between the void
and the crack origin, d/a. As the initial crack extension
direction, h, continuously changes within an allowable
range (0180), it is found that only when h is smaller than
a critical angle, hcr, can the crack be nally arrested by the
embedded void. Since each combination of a/L and d/a corresponds to a single hcr, and a larger hcr implies a higher
probability for arresting randomly initiated cracks, the critical angle, hcr, is therefore identied as a critical parameter
characterizing the crack arrestor system.
We further study the evolution of hcr with respect to
both d/a and a/L. When d/a is xed (Fig. 5), with the
increase of a/L, hcr rst experiences an upper plateau
(a/L < 1), then rapidly drops by 4060% within a narrow
range (a/L = 130), and nally falls to a lower plateau
(a/L>30) where no more signicant variation is observed.
Since larger hcr is favored for being able to arrest more randomly directed cracks, a simple yet eective criterion can
be established for maximizing the crack arrest probability;
that is, systems with smaller a/L can perform better, and
more specically, a/L < 1 is desired.
When a/L is xed, hcr decreases with increasing d/a. Nevertheless, an extended inuence zone can be identied such
that a crack would be arrested by the void if the extension
of its initial path intersects the extended inuence zone.
This zone is closely relevant to the stress concentration
around the void, and beyond such zone the stress

L. Liu, X. Chen / Acta Materialia 56 (2008) 62146223

perturbation is relatively negligible. In other words, a crack

tends to be attracted (and eventually arrested) by a void
only when it feels the prominent stress eld caused by the
void, such that the system strain energy can be alleviated.
The size of the extended inuence zone is also dependent
on a/L, in the same fashion hcr as for any given d/a.
The performance of crack arrestors using isolated circular inclusions is compared with those using square and
heart-shaped voids. No prominent dierence is observed
in terms of the critical angle, which suggests that the void
shape is not an important parameter of pursuing higher
crack arrest ability.
When a group of circular voids form a pattern, a Monte
Carlo simulation is employed to estimate the mean/median
crack length (the eective length of randomly initiated cracks
before being arrested). It is found that, in terms of the mean
crack length, the random arrangement of inclusions is
superior when the void volume fraction V is below 5%, while
the regular patterns (such as triangular and square patterns)
are advantageous only when more voids are embedded in the
thin lm. While the median crack length is considered,
however, random pattern loses its advantage in all ranges
of V studied. These ranks, resulted from the geometrical pros
and cons of various patterns, reveals the eectiveness of
patterns are strongly case dependent, not only relevant to
the prescribed value of V, but also relying on the specic
evaluation index (mean or median).
The results of this paper may be useful for controlling
ordered crack patterns using crack arrestors in mechanical
self-assembly, which complements the self-assembled buckling and delamination patterns in thin lms [2327] and the
indentation guided crack patterns [2830], thus enriching
the theoretical basis of mechanical self-assembly. In addition, the present study provides important insights for
eectively capturing cracks using toughening phases to
ensure system integrity.
Acknowledgments
The work is supported in part by NSF CMMI-CAREER-0643726, and in part by the Department of Civil

Engineering
University.

and

6223

Engineering

Mechanics,

Columbia

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