On scattering in a piezoelectric medium by a conducting crack

The work is concerned with the characterization of a Kirchhoff diffraction field in a piezoelectric material. An exact solution is obtained for the full scattering fields around the tip of a semi-infinite crack, which is electrically conducting and is loaded with both SH acoustic incident waves and in-plane electrical incident waves. First, it is found that a conducting crack in a piezoelectric solid is not completely opaque to the electro-acoustic wave, i.e., the electro-acoustic wave can penetrate and transmit to the other side of the crack surface. Second, the analysis has confirmed that the interaction between electrical wave and acoustic wave will provide multiple electrical and electro-acoustic head waves. Third, by solving the problem, we have established a rigorous electro-acoustic scattering theory in piezoelectric/ferroelectric media, which is different from the scattering theory in purely elastic media. The characterization of the scattering fields in piezoelectric media provides a unique signature database for electro-acoustic waves in piezoelectric materials. Copyright © 2005 by ASME.