Engineering Fracture Mechanics 133 Supplement 1 (2015) 144–145

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Engineering Fracture Mechanics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engfracmech

Peer Review Report

Peer review report 2 on ‘‘Temperature-dependent R-curve behavior of the

lead-free ferroelectric 0.615Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3-0.385(Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3
ceramic’’

Original Submission

Recommendation

Publish after minor amendments

Comments to the author

These are very nice experiments and the data and discussion will be useful to the community interested in ferroelastic
materials (ferroelectrics, shape memory devices, etc.) I strongly recommend the paper be considered for eventual publica-
tion in Engineering Fracture Mechanics. However, I have some recommendations that the authors should seriously consider
before moving forward with publication.
My only major criticism with the paper is the focus on the process zone height as a reliable parameter for interpreting
toughness enhancement. There are a significant number of interdependent phenomena in these measurements (coercive
stress, spontaneous strain, reversibility, elasticity, etc.) and h is never measured directly. Moreover, many variables that
define the value of h are not measured e.g. effectiveness of domain switching, lattice distortion, and back stresses. Thus,
there is little justification to invoke ‘‘h’’ strongly in the discussion and conclusions in the present work. Discussion on ‘‘h’’
is speculative at best. Other ways to discuss would be better. More on this below.
The authors’ major conclusion is that ‘‘The decreasing max K implies that the decrease of the process zone efficiency has a
larger impact on max K than the increase in process zone height.’’ However, process zone height is calculated from some
other parameters and is not measured directly. The calculation is an approximation, at best, and the use of ‘‘h’’ overly sim-
plifies the problem.
I point the authors to the work of Landis (JMPS 2003; doi:10.1016/S0022-5096(03)00065-6), in which a more informed
equation is presented to describe toughness enhancement: epsilon_c ⁄ E / sigma_o (where epsilon_c seems to be the same as
the parameter epsilon_r_el in the present work, and sigma_o is the coercive stress which is defined as sigma_c in the present
work). While still an approximation for describing toughness enhancement, it is a better than equations 4-5 in the present
work. In fact, there is no need to infer process zone height to draw useful conclusions and the parameters more directly
relate to the parameters measured in the present work.
Using Landis’ equation to interpret the results, we can say the following: Epsilon_c decreases substantially with increased
temperature (Figure 4). Sigma_o also decreases with increased temperature; we expect this to decrease slightly but not as
substantially as change in Epsilon_c shown in Figure 4 (coercive stresses are stated as a conclusion in the paper, but I did not
see the values reported in the manuscript). Since Epsilon_c and Sigma_o both decrease with increased temperature, and
toughness decreases with increased temperature, we can conclude that: The decrease in Epsilon_c dominates the decrease
in sigma_o, leading to an overall decrease in Kmax with increased temperature. This is what is observed experimentally
(Figure 3).
Now returning to the authors’ conclusion that ‘‘The decreasing max K implies that the decrease of the process zone effi-
ciency has a larger impact on max K than the increase in process zone height’’: The authors can now make conclusions

DOI of published article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfracmech.2015.06.069

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfracmech.2015.06.076
 Peer Review Report / Engineering Fracture Mechanics 133 Supplement 1 (2015) 144–145 145

without invoking h, i.e. that both parameters above decrease with temperature, and that Epsilon_c dominates which leads to
a decreasing Kmax.

First Revision

Recommendation

Publish after minor amendments

Comments to the author

The authors have responded appropriately to my prior comments. The paper is excellent and certainly suitable for pub-
lication in Engineering Fracture Mechanics.
I have a few minor comments they should consider before acceptance:
- Liu and Ren did not ‘‘discover’’ the BCT-BZT system, as suggested by the authors at the bottom of page 1. This is a mis-
conception by the authors. Please see work of McQuarrie and Behnke in Journal of the American Ceramic Society, Vol. 37, No.
11, page 539+, ‘‘Structural and Dielectric Studies in the System (Ba,Ca)(Ti,Zr)O.’’ McQuarrie and Behnke should be credited
with the discovery, or at least attribution of such discovery removed from Liu and Ren.
- page 4: ‘‘everyone 30 s’’ should be ‘‘every 30 s’’?

Anonymous reviewer