Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur

Effective properties of thermo-electro-

mechanically coupled piezoelectric fiber
reinforced composites
Parveen Sahni
17ME63R52
M.Tech First Year in Mechanical Systems Design

Department of Mechanical Engineering

 Content
• Introduction

• Objective

• Micromechanics model

• Implementation

• Results and discussions

• Conclusion

• Reference
Introduction
 Piezoelectricity
• Piezoelectricity is ability of certain material to generate
electricity when subjected to mechanical stress.

• Wide range of applications like sensors and actuators in

control applications , energy harvesting , piezoelectric
accelerometer etc.

• Some piezoelectric materials are PZT , PVDF and

barium titanate .

• Limitations :- low piezoelectric constants , high specific

acoustic impedance etc.
 Piezoelectric fiber reinforced composites
• Obtained by combining piezoelectic fibers with non-
piezoelectric materials.

• Superior Mechanical and electrical properties .

Fig 1. Schematic diagram of PFRC lamina

 Objective

• Determine the thermo-electro-mechanical properties of

piezoelectric fibre reinforced composites.

• Determine their behaviour in thermo-electro-mechanical

environment.

• Determine the effect of properties of its constituents

materials on effective properties of the piezoelectric
composites .
Micromechanics model
 Strength of material approach
• PFRC consist of a no. of piezoelectric fibers surrounded by
matrix material.
• Whole PFRC can be visualized as an assembly of no. of
rectangular representative volume element (RVE) containing
both fiber and the surrounding matrix.
• Fig 2. shows transverse cross-section of RVE of PFRC.
• In average sense the effective properties of the PFRC would
be same as that of RVE.

Fig2. Transverse crossection of RVE of PFRC

 Assumptions
• Analysis is linearly elastic.
• Proposed composite is homogeneous.
• Fibres are continuous , parallel and aligned in longitudinal
direction.
• Composites is subjected to a constant electric field in the
direction transverse to that of fibres.
• Same electric field and temperature change in both the matrix
and the piezoelectric fibres.
• Fibers are piezoelectrically active whereas ,matrix is
piezoelectrically inactive.
• No slippage between fibers and the matrix.
 Constitutive equations :-
• For transversely isotropic piezoelectrically active fibres in voigt’s notation
• For isotropic piezoelectrically inactive matrix in usual voigt’s notation :-
• The resultant constitutive equation of composite can be defined as :-
• Electric field is applied in transverse direction only and is
same in both matrix and fibre.

where E is the average electric field in the z-direction .

• Temperature change is same in both fibre and matrix and

hence

• As perfect bonding is assumed ,therefore strain are same in x-

direction
…….(1)
• By rule of mixtures other strains can be written as

....(2)

where vf and vm are the volume fractions of fibre and matrix respecti-
-vely.
• Axial equilibrium of composite requires that stresses in the axial
direction can be written using the rule of mixture as

….(3)
• Others stresses in the composites can be written as

. .........(4)

• Also, resultant permitivity in the PFRC composite can be written by

rule of mixture as

….(5)
• Equations 1-5 after combining with the constitutive equations
of the fibres and matrix give effective property for the
composite.
• The effective electromechanical coefficients for the composite
thus obtained are
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)

(13)
(14)
(15)

(16)
(17)

(18)
(19)
(20)

(21)
(22)
(23)

(24)
Implementation
• Table 1
Elastic properties of piezoelectric fibres and matrix

• Table 2
Elastic properties of piezoelectric fibres and matrix
• Table 3
Coefficeints of thermal expansion of piezoelectric fibres and matrix
Results and discussions
• Table 4
Effective proerties of PZT-5H /epoxy composite (vf)

• The basic motive of the study is to find the effect of fibre

volume fraction and matrix properties on effective
piezoelectric,pyroelectric and thermal properties of the PFRC.
• Non dimensional parameters as follows
• For fiber volume fraction between 0.4 to 0.8 (approx.) the piezoelectric coefficient
is more for PFRC than the piezoelectric fibre itself.
 Conclusion
• The main outcome of this work is the evaluation of effective
coupled thermo-electro-mechanical coefficients of PFRC.
• There is increase in effective pyroelectric coefficient p33 in the
PFRC.
• Strong dependence of effective PFRC properties on the
young’s modulus of the matrix material(soft) has been
observed.
Reference :-
1. A.kumar , D.chkraborty. Effective properties of thermo-electro-mechanically
coupled piezoelectric fiber reinforced composites.Materials and Design 30
(2009) 1216–1222