Electroelastic behavior of doubly periodic piezoelectric fiber composites under antiplane shear

Abstract

The piezoelectric composites with a doubly periodic parallelogrammic array of piezoelectric fibers are dealt with under antiplane shear coupled with inplane electrical load. A rigorous analytical method is developed by using the doubly quasi-periodic Riemann boundary value problem theory integrated with the eigenstrain and eigen-electrical-field concepts. The numerical results are presented and a comparison with finite element calculations, experimental data and micromechanical analysis is made to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the present method. Subsequently, the present solutions are used to study two important topics in piezoelectric fiber composites, i.e., (1) stress and electrical field fluctuations in the microstructure, (2) the macroscopic effective electroelastic moduli. The relation between the macroscopic properties of the composites and their microstructural parameters is discussed and many interesting electroelastic interaction phenomena are revealed, which are useful to estimate and optimize the performance of piezoelectric composites. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.