A micromechanical study on the electro-elastic behavior of piezoelectric fibrous composites using element free Galerkin method

A two dimensional generalized plane strain micromechanical model is developed to study electro-elastic behavior of piezoelectric fiber reinforced composites (PFRC) with transverse polarization. A small repeating area of the composite, representing a quarter of fiber surrounded by matrix is considered as representative volume element (RVE). The composite system consists of long parallel piezoelectric fibers with transversely isotropic properties and perfectly bounded to the isotropic matrix in a square array arrangement. In addition, the constituents are assumed to have both linear elastic and electrical behavior, whereas, the matrix is piezoelectrically passive. The element free Galerkin method is employed to obtain solution for the governing system of partial differential of equations. In this method, the Moving Least Square shape functions are used to approximate the field variable at arbitrary point. Comparison of the presented results with other techniques available in the literature reveals good agreement. It is demonstrated that the piezoelectric coefficient “e31” in the transverse polarization is considerably improved in comparison with corresponding coefficient of pure piezoelectric material. Furthermore, as a result, it is found that fibers with elliptical cross section may enhance the amount of electrical sensitivity of PFRC several times than circular fibers in a specific direction.