Ferroelastic fatigue of a soft PZT ceramic

The performance and expected lifetime of piezoelectric ceramic components are ultimately defined by bulk material fatigue processes. In this work, strain accumulation of a ferroelectric/ferroelastic ceramic lead zirconate titanate is characterized under mechanical cycling using four-point bend bar geometry. Strain accumulation occurs at a higher rate than in creep alone, indicating that the processes are fatigue related, and it is conformed by X-ray diffraction that the accumulated strain is contributed under both cyclic tensile and compressive stress by domain switching. The relative ranking of measured mechanical strains is nearly the same as the theoretical saturated domain-switching strains.