Fractal cluster modeling of the fatigue behavior of lead zirconate titanate

The fatigue behavior of lead zirconate titanate ceramics (PZT) has been studied under electrical and mechanical drives. Piezoelectric fatigue was studied using a mechanical method. Under ac mechanical drive, hard and soft PZTs showed an increase in the longitudinal piezoelectric constant at short times, reaching a maximum at intermediate times. Systematic investigations were performed to characterize the electrical fatigue behavior. A decrease in the magnitude of the remanent polarization was observed, which was relatively high for soft PZT. The dynamics of fatigue have been shown to scale to a hierarchical relaxation process, and this is typical of random field systems. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.