“…Therefore, to improve properties of these materials, it is very important to study the fracture formation and development under various load configurations. However, the problems related to fracture in this material system are rather complex both theoretically and experimentally, except for some simple cases (Chung and Ting, 1995;Liu et al, 2001;Song and Sih, 2003;Hou et al, 2003;Qin, 2004;Jiang and Pan, 2004;Zhao et al, 2006;Wang and Mai, 2007;Dong et al, 2008;Sladek et al, 2008;Zhou and Chen, 2008).…”