Constitutive modeling of piezoelectric polymer composites

A new modeling approach is proposed for predicting the bulk electromechanical properties of piezoelectric composites. The proposed model offers the same level of convenience as the well-known Mori-Tanaka method. The electromechanical properties of four piezoelectric polymer composite materials are predicted with the proposed, Mori-Tanaka, Self-consistent methods, and detailed finite element analyses are conducted over full ranges of reinforcement volume fractions. The presented data offer a comprehensive comparison of the four modeling approaches for a wide range of matrix and reinforcement electromechanical properties, reinforcement geometry, and reinforcement volume fraction. By comparison with the finite element data, it is shown that the proposed model predicts properties that are, in some cases, more accurate than the Mori-Tanaka and Self-consistent schemes. (C) 2004 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.