An analytical approach to evaluate effective coefficients of 1–3 piezoelectric composites

In this paper, a micromechanics method is developed to evaluate effective coefficients of piezoelectric fiber-reinforced composites. An exact solution is derived for effective elastic, piezoelectric and dielectric coefficients of such piezocomposites subjected to the applied load in the direction transverse to the fiber orientation. Simultaneously, based on finite element method, a numerical study is performed on a representative volume element of such piezo composite containing fiber in square packing arrangement. The finite element method provides a numerical solution to evaluate effective elastic, piezoelectric and dielectric coefficients for discrete volume fraction of fiber, the range being 0.1–0.6 for this study. The results are interpolated to understand the overall behavior of such piezocomposites. The results obtained from the micromechanics method and the finite element method are compared with the results obtained from other models based on strength of materials method given in the literature. It is observed that the method developed in this study provides better results for effective coefficients susceptible to fiber packing arrangements.