Three-Phase Cylinder Model of One-Dimensional Hexagonal Piezoelectric Quasi-Crystal Composites

A three-phase cylinder model (inclusion/matrix/composite) is proposed and analyzed for one-dimensional (1D) piezoelectric quasi-crystal composites. The exact closed-form solutions of the stresses of the phonon and phason fields and the electric field are derived under far-field antiplane mechanical and in-plane electric loadings via the Laurent expansion technique. Numerical results show that the thickness and material properties of the interphase layer can significantly affect the induced fields in the inclusion and interphase layer. Furthermore, the generalized self-consistent method is applied to predict analytically the effective moduli of the piezoelectric quasi-crystal composites. It is observed from the numerical examples that the effective moduli of piezoelectric quasi-crystal composites are very sensitive to the fiber volume fraction as well as to the individual material properties of the fiber and matrix. By comparing QC/PE with QC1/QC2, PE/QC, and PZT-7/epoxy, we found that using QC as fiber could, in general, enhance the effective properties, a conclusion which is in agreement with the recent experimental results.