Effects of couple stresses on anti-plane problems of piezoelectric media with inhomogeneities (Q885976)

The authors investigate antiplane problems for piezoelastic materials with couple stress, the introduction of which induces a skew-symmetric part in the stress tensor. Using the principle of conservation of energy, the authors deduce constitutive equations for a transversely isotropic material. The spherical part of the couple stress, as expected, does not intervene in the proposed equations. It is then shown that the static equation for the (only non-vanishing) out-of-plane mechanical displacement includes a new characteristic length which depends on both the mechanical and electrical properties of the material. General solutions are provided, in polar coordinates, for out-of-plane mechanical displacement, electrical displacement, stress components and couple stress component. In order to investigate the effect of this characteristic length on distributions of different quantities of physical interest, the authors consider two specific problems for an infinite plane from a piezoelastic material containing: 1) a circular hole; 2) a circular inclusion of another piezoelastic material. Far-field conditions are assumed. When compared to the corresponding classical (without couple stress) solutions, the obtained analytical formulas and the corresponding figures for distributions of stress and electric field show a drastic dependence of the solutions on the relative size of the hole, or inclusion, with respect to the newly introduced characteristic length. In particular, the electric field inside the inclusion is no more constant, and the stress concentration at the edge of the hole may be appreciably affected.