Full 3D effective properties of d31 piezoelectric macro-fibre composites

What is it about?

Piezoelectric macro-fibre composites (MFC) transducers have become very popular since they combine conformability and high energy density. The paper presents the full 3D effective electromechanical properties of a d31 MFC that can be used for finite element analysis of smart structures and other applications that make use of these transducers. The paper is available at: https://rdcu.be/eFBay

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Photo by Declan Sun on Unsplash

Photo by Declan Sun on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The evaluation of the complete full 3D elastic, piezoelectric and dielectric matrices of MFCs is essential for the FE simulations using the homogenized patches. In particular because most commercial FE packages with piezoelectric modelling capability require the information of the complete properties matrices. Also, for some applications, in which the homogenized patch may be rotated such that the macro-fibre direction does not coincide with the direction of interest, even simplified 1D or 2D equivalent models may require the complete properties matrices. The alternative for informing the proper coefficients, which is usually considered in the literature, is to use the corresponding coefficients of either the fibre alone, provided by the manufacturer, or the active layer, computed using homogenization. For coefficients that are considered less relevant, some even use zero values. However, it is now known that these alternatives lead to unsatisfactory test/model correlation. Therefore, for future FE simulations of structures with MFCs, it is crucial to characterize all effective elastic, piezoelectric and dielectric properties.