Characterization of piezoelectric composites with mechanical and electrical imperfect contacts

The aim of the present work is to study the influence of the mechanical and electrical imperfections in reinforced piezoelectric composite materials with unidirectional cylindrical fibers periodically distributed in rhombic cells under mechanical and electrical imperfect contacts. The behavior of the composites is studied through two approaches: the two-scale asymptotic homogenization method and the finite element method. The asymptotic homogenization method is applied to a two-phase composite with mechanical and electrical imperfect contacts and to a three-phase composite with perfect contact in the interphase. The constituents of the composite are homogeneous piezoelectric materials with transversely isotropic properties. The local problems are formulated for the spring-capacitor and three-phase models by the asymptotic homogenization method. The solution of each plane local problem is found using potential methods of a complex variable and the properties of doubly periodic Weierstrass elliptic functions. Closed-form formulae are obtained for the effective properties of the composites with both types of imperfect contacts and different configuration of the cells. The finite element method is implemented for analysis of piezoelectric composite materials with unidirectional cylindrical fibers periodically distributed in rhombic cells under mechanical and electrical imperfect contacts. Some numerical examples are given under the presence of both imperfect contacts and different arrangement of the cells. Comparisons between the numerical results reported by asymptotic homogenization method and finite element method are provided.