Effective properties of thermo-electro-mechanically coupled piezoelectric fiber reinforced composites

In the present work, strength of materials based approach has been used for determination of effective coupled thermo-electro-mechanical (TEM) properties of piezoelectric fiber reinforced composite (PFRC). Rectangular representative volume element (RVE) with rectangular fibers has been considered and dependencies of effective coupled thermo-electro-mechanical coefficients of PFRC on fiber volume fraction have been studied. Results obtained for electro-mechanical coefficients have been compared with already published results [Mallik N, Ray MC. Effective coefficients of piezoelectric fiber reinforced composites. AIAA J 2003;41:704-10. Ray MC. Micromechanics of piezoelectric composites with improved effective piezoelectric constant. Int Mech Mater Des 2006;3:361-71] and show an excellent agreement. Results also show that effective thermal coefficients are reduced and the effective pyroelectric coefficients for PFRC are increased (for some fiber volume fraction range) compared to that in bulk piezoelectric materials. Model predicts strong dependence of the effective coefficients of the PFRC on the fiber volume fraction as well as elastic properties of matrix. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.