Hybrid fundamental-solution-based FEM for piezoelectric materials

In this paper, a new type of hybrid finite element method (FEM), hybrid fundamental-solution-based FEM (HFS-FEM), is developed for analyzing plane piezoelectric problems by employing fundamental solutions (Green’s functions) as internal interpolation functions. A modified variational functional used in the proposed model is first constructed, and then the assumed intra-element displacement fields satisfying a priori the governing equations of the problem are constructed by using a linear combination of fundamental solutions at a number of source points located outside the element domain. To ensure continuity of fields over inter-element boundaries, conventional shape functions are employed to construct the independent element frame displacement fields defined over the element boundary. The proposed methodology is assessed by several examples with different boundary conditions and is also used to investigate the phenomenon of stress concentration in infinite piezoelectric medium containing a hole under remote loading. The numerical results show that the proposed algorithm has good performance in numerical accuracy and mesh distortion insensitivity compared with analytical solutions and those from ABAQUS. In addition, some new insights on the stress concentration have been clarified and presented in the paper.