Piezoelectric Analogy of Generalized Torsion in Anisotropic Elasticity

We consider a piezoelectric body bounded by a cylindrical surface in which all cross sections are of the same geometry. Suppose on the lateral surface the body is loaded in such a way that the stress and electric displacement do not vary along the axial direction. In addition the end of the cylinder is also subjected to forces reducing to bending moments, twisting moment, axial force and electric charge. We follow Lekhnitskii's formalism to characterize the deformation of the considered problem. It is found that, when the solid possesses a material symmetry plane normal to the axial direction, the simplified field equations together with suitably chosen boundary conditions are entirely analogous to those of a generalized torsion problem in anisotropic elasticity. In particular, we show that by setting a linkage between two sets of 21 material constants, any problem in one field can be resolved as another problem in the other area. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.