Size-dependent effective electroelastic moduli of piezoelectric nanocomposites with interface effect (Q645330)

Effective electroelastic moduli play a significant role in the estimation and design of piezoelectric nanocomposites. Here, the authors present a theoretical study on size-dependent effective electroelastic moduli of piezoelectric nanocomposites with interface effect under far-feld antiplane mechanical load and inplane electric load. An exact solution is obtained for an inhomogeneity-matrix-equivalent medium model for predicting effective electroelastic moduli of nanocomposites based on the theory of Gurtin-Murdoch surface-interface model. As an illustrative numerical example, PZT-5H as the inhomogeneity and PZT-5 as the matrix are chosen, and the variations of dimensionless electroelastic moduli with the size of inhomogeneity are obtained. The example reveals the size dependence of effective electroelastic moduli when the size of the inhomogeneity is comparable to the order of nanometer. The results are shown to recover some earlier ones when the size of the inhomogeneity increases. The paper may be of interest to researchers and engineers working in the area of piezoelectric nanocomposites.