Elastic and piezoelectric properties of piezoelectric composite materials

Author(s):  
Ken-Ya Hashimoto ◽  
Masatune Yamaguchi
Author(s):  
Federico Fabriani ◽  
Giulia Lanzara

Abstract The excellent piezoelectric properties of Polyvinyl Fluoride (PVDF), its low cost, ease of workability and high chemical resistance, make it very useful to develop sensing devices for structural health monitoring applications (SHM). However, challenges occur when the devices need to be embedded into a hosting material or structure which could instead be damaged. In this study, the PVDF device is transformed into an ultralight and porous piezoelectric mat formed by ultra-long and randomly distributed micro fibers. The piezoelectric mat is embedded into a glass fiber (GF) composite by intercalating it with the GF layers during the lay-up process. This approach allows the realization of an intelligent composite that is capable to self-monitor its strain or vibrations during inservice life.


A set of four tensors corresponding to Eshelby’s tensor in elasticity are obtained for an ellipsoidal inclusion embedded in an infinite piezoelectric medium. These tensors, which describe the elastic, piezoelectric, and dielectric constraint of the matrix, are obtained from W. F. Deeg’s solution to inclusion and inhomogeneity problems in piezoelectric solids. These tensors are then used as the backbone in the development of a micromechanics theory to predict the effective elastic, dielectric, and piezoelectric moduli of particle and fibre reinforced composite materials. The effects of interaction among inhomogeneities at finite concentrations are approximated through the Mori-Tanaka mean field approach. This approach, although widely utilized in the study of uncoupled elastic and dielectric behaviour, has not before been applied to the study of coupled behaviour. To help ensure confidence in the theory, the analytical predictions are proven to be self-consistent, diagonally symmetric, and to exhibit the correct behaviour in the low and high concentration limits. Finally, numerical results are presented to illustrate the effects of the concentration, shape, and material properties of the reinforcement on the effective properties of piezoelectric composites and analytical predictions are shown to result in good agreement with existing experimental data.


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