An evaluation of a class of phenomenological theories of ferroelectricity in polycrystalline ceramics (Q2324422)

The authors investigate a class of phenomenological theories of ferroelectricity in polycrystalline ceramics which find important applications in evaluating the performance of electro-deformable devices. A previous study by the authors had revealed that this class of theories, which fundamentally rely on the decomposition of the strain and the dipole density into reversible and irreversible parts, suffer unexpected predictions for certain loading histories due to the nonconvex dependence of the internal energy on the irreversible variables. The present study investigates this aspect in depth. After a brief introduction of the theories, the authors present sample behaviour of typical ferroelectric solids in the form of plots for the electric displacement and axial strain in the direction of the applied loading as a function of the electric field intensity. It is found, in particular, that ``predictions of the theory become unstable above a certain level of mechanical stress, which can be on the order of a few megapascals or even lower for typical sets of material parameters employed in the literature''. In conclusion, it is argued that ``this class of theories should be used with caution, even within their presumed range of validity''. Concluding remarks are given that robust phenomenological theories require the use of enriched sets of internal variables to describe the distribution of permanent dipoles within the solid.