A coupled electromechanical analysis of a piezoelectric layer bonded to an elastic substrate: Part II,numerical solution and applications

This two-part contribution presents a novel and efficient method to analyze the two-dimensional (2-D) electromechanical fields of a piezoelectric layer bonded to an elastic substrate, which takes into account the fully coupled electric and mechanical behaviors. In Part I, we have obtained a system of governing integro-differential equations for the structure via a variational principle. This part presents a numerical solution algorithm of the integro-differential equations and the numerical results of some applications. A numerical algorithm for solving the system of four integro-differential equations with strongly singular kernels is developed. The convergence of the numerical algorithm is discussed. The numerical results suggest that the fully coupled electromechanical analysis is helpful for a better understanding of the performance of the piezoelectric sensor and actuator. The interfacial normal stress is much higher than the interfacial shear stress, suggesting that the interfacial normal stress causes a delamination initiation.     

Energy principle of ferroelectric ceramics and single domain mechanical model

Many physical experiments have shown that the domain switching in a ferroelectric material is a complicated evolution process of the domain wall with the variation of stress and electric field. According to this mechanism, the volume fraction of the domain switching is introduced in the constitutive law of ferroelectric ceramic and used to study the nonlinear constitutive behavior of ferroelectric body in this paper. The principle of stationary total energy is put forward in which the basic unknown quantities are the displacement u _i , electric displacement D _i and volume fraction ρ _I of the domain switching for the variant I. Mechanical field equation and a new domain switching criterion are obtained from the principle of stationary total energy. The domain switching criterion proposed in this paper is an expansion and development of the energy criterion. On the basis of the domain switching criterion, a set of linear algebraic equations for the volume fraction ρ _I of domain switching is obtained, in which the coefficients of the linear algebraic equations only contain the unknown strain and electric fields. Then a single domain mechanical model is proposed in this paper. The poled ferroelectric specimen is considered as a transversely isotropic single domain. By using the partial experimental results, the hardening relation between the driving force of domain switching and the volume fraction of domain switching can be calibrated. Then the electromechanical response can be calculated on the basis of the calibrated hardening relation. The results involve the electric butterfly shaped curves of axial strain versus axial electric field, the hysteresis loops of electric displacement versus electric filed and the evolution process of the domain switching in the ferroelectric specimens under uniaxial coupled stress and electric field loading. The present theoretic prediction agrees reasonably with the experimental results given by Lynch. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10572138).     

Effect of initial stress on the propagation behavior of Love waves in a layered piezoelectric structure

The propagation behavior of Love waves in a layered piezoelectric structure with an initial stress is investigated in this article. It involves a thin piezoelectric layer bonded perfectly to an elastic substrate. Solutions of the mechanical displacement and electrical potential function are obtained for the piezoelectric layer and elastic substrate by solving the coupled electromechanical field equations. The phase velocity equations of the Love wave propagation and the stress fields in the layered piezoelectric structure are obtained for electrical open and short cases on the free surface, respectively. The effect of the initial stress on the phase velocity, the stress fields and the coupled electromechanical factor are discussed, respectively. Three sets of piezoelectric layer–elastic substrate systems are considered, i.e. BaTiO₃ ceramic layer–borosilicate glass substrate, PZT-5H ceramic layer–borosilicate glass substrate, and PZT-5H ceramic layer–SiO₂ glass substrate. It is seen that the phase velocity of the Love wave propagation decreases with the increase of the magnitude of the initial stress. The coupled electromechanical factor increases remarkably, as the magnitude of the initial the stress is greater than 100 MPa. This is useful for the design of acoustic surface wave devices.     

Generalized mixed finite element method for 3D elasticity problems

Without applying any stable element techniques in the mixed methods, two simple generalized mixed element(GME) formulations were derived by combining the minimum potential energy principle and Hellinger–Reissner(H–R) variational principle. The main features of the GME formulations are that the common C0-continuous polynomial shape functions for displacement methods are used to express both displacement and stress variables, and the coefficient matrix of these formulations is not only automatically symmetric but also invertible. Hence, the numerical results of the generalized mixed methods based on the GME formulations are stable. Displacement as well as stress results can be obtained directly from the algebraic system for finite element analysis after introducing stress and displacement boundary conditions simultaneously. Numerical examples show that displacement and stress results retain the same accuracy. The results of the noncompatible generalized mixed method proposed herein are more accurate than those of the standard noncompatible displacement method. The noncompatible generalized mixed element is less sensitive to element geometric distortions.     

Energy theorems and the J-integral in dipolar gradient elasticity

Within the framework of Mindlin’s dipolar gradient elasticity, general energy theorems are proved in this work. These are the theorem of minimum potential energy, the theorem of minimum complementary potential energy, a variational principle analogous to that of the Hellinger–Reissner principle in classical theory, two theorems analogous to those of Castigliano and Engesser in classical theory, a uniqueness theorem of the Kirchhoff–Neumann type, and a reciprocal theorem. These results can be of importance to computational methods for analyzing practical problems. In addition, the J-integral of fracture mechanics is derived within the same framework. The new form of the J-integral is identified with the energy release rate at the tip of a growing crack and its path-independence is proved.The theory of dipolar gradient elasticity derives from considerations of microstructure in elastic continua [Mindlin, R.D., 1964. Microstructure in linear elasticity. Arch. Rational Mech. Anal. 16, 51–78] and is appropriate to model materials with periodic structure. According to this theory, the strain-energy density assumes the form of a positive-definite function of the strain (as in classical elasticity) and the second gradient of the displacement (additional term). Specific cases of the general theory considered here are the well-known theory of couple-stress elasticity and the recently popularized theory of strain-gradient elasticity. The latter case is also treated in the present study.     

Piezoelectric study on circularly cylindrical layered media

In this paper, an analytical solution in series form for the problem of a circularly cylindrical layered piezoelectric composite consisting of N dissimilar layers is presented within the framework of linear piezoelectricity. Each layer of the composite is assumed to be transversely isotropic with respect to the longitudinal direction (x₃ direction), and the composite is subject to arbitrary electromechanical singularities infinitely extended in a direction perpendicular to the x₁–x₂ plane such that only in-plane electric fields and out-of-plane displacement are produced. The alternating technique in conjunction with the method of analytical continuation is applied to derive the general multilayered media solution in an explicit series form, whose convergence is guaranteed numerically. The distributions of the shear stress and electric field are found to be dependent on the material combinations and the magnitude and position of the electromechanical singularities. An exactly closed form solution is obtained and discussed graphically for a practical example.     

A new hybrid stress element method for the analysis of elastoplastic solids

Based on a modified Hellinger/Reissner variational principle which includes the equivalent stress, equivalent plastic strain and non-conforming displacement increments as independent variables, a quadrilateral isoparametric hybrid stress element for the analysis of elastoplastic problem is proposed. By this formulation, the yield criterion and flow rule are satisfied in an average sense and greater accuracy can be obtained by using non-conforming displacement. A numerical example is presented to show that the present model has high accuracy and computational effectiveness.This project is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of the State Education Commission.     

A Bending-Gradient model for thick plates,Part II: Closed-form solutions for cylindrical bending of laminates

In the first part (Lebée and Sab, 2010a) of this two-part paper we have presented a new plate theory for out-of-plane loaded thick plates where the static unknowns are those of the Kirchhoff–Love theory (3 in-plane stresses and 3 bending moments), to which six components are added representing the gradient of the bending moment. The new theory, called Bending-Gradient plate theory is an extension to arbitrarily layered plates of the Reissner–Mindlin plate theory which appears as a special case when the plate is homogeneous. Moreover, we demonstrated that, in the general case, the Bending-Gradient model cannot be reduced to a Reissner–Mindlin model. In this paper, the Bending-Gradient theory is applied to laminated plates and its predictions are compared to those of Reissner–Mindlin theory and to full 3D (Pagano, 1969) exact solutions. The main conclusion is that the Bending-Gradient gives good predictions of deflection, shear stress distributions and in-plane displacement distributions in any material configuration. Moreover, under some symmetry conditions, the Bending-Gradient model coincides with the second-order approximation of the exact solution as the slenderness ratio L/h goes to infinity.     

Continuum Electromechanical Theory for Nematic Continua with Application to Freedericksz Instability

Of interest in this work are nematic continua that exhibit electromechanical coupling. The first part of this paper presents a novel variational formulation with a potential energy depending on four independent variables (the displacement, director, specific polarization and electric displacement perturbation). Variations of the potential energy with respect to each one of these variables lead to the governing mechanical equilibrium and constitutive relations plus Maxwell’s equations.The proposed variational formulation is next applied to the study of bifurcation of an infinite layer of a nematic liquid crystal confined between two parallel plates and subjected to a uniform electric field perpendicular to these plates under full anchoring boundary conditions. As the electric field exceeds a critical value, the nematic directors which are initially parallel to the plates, rotate and tend to align with the electric field orientation. This phenomenon, termed in the literature as Freedericksz transition, is treated here as a bifurcation problem using a fully 2D formulation. It is shown that the solution corresponding to the lowest applied electric field, also termed the critical load, is uniform in the direction parallel to the plates and that the corresponding bifurcated path is stable near this critical load. This result holds for arbitrary positive constants of the Frank-Oseen energy (and values of electric susceptibility constants that allow bifurcation) and justifies the 1D treatment of the Freedericksz transition in 2D settings that is widely adopted in the liquid crystal literature. An asymptotic analysis of the supercritical, stable bifurcated equilibrium path about the critical load is also presented and compared with the exact bifurcated solution.     

A hybrid-stress element based on Hamilton principle

A novel hybrid-stress finite element method is proposed for constructing simple 4-node quadrilateral plane elements, and the new element is denoted as HH4-3fl here. Firstly, the theoretical basis of the traditional hybrid-stress elements, i.e., the Hellinger-Reissner variational principle, is replaced by the Hamilton variational principle, in which the number of the stress variables is reduced from 3 to 2. Secondly, three stress parameters and corresponding trial functions are introduced into the system equations. Thirdly, the displacement fields of the conventional bilinear isoparametric element are employed in the new models. Finally, from the stationary condition, the stress parameters can be expressed in terms of the displacement parameters, and thus the new element stiffness matrices can be obtained. Since the required number of stress variables in the Hamilton variational principle is less than that in the Hellinger-Reissner variational principle, and no additional incompatible displacement modes are considered, the new hybrid-stress element is simpler than the traditional ones. Furthermore, in order to improve the accuracy of the stress solutions, two enhanced post-processing schemes are also proposed for element HH4-3β. Numerical examples show that the proposed model exhibits great improvements in both displacement and stress solutions, implying that the proposed technique is an effective way for developing simple finite element models with high performance.     

A two-dimensional model for linear elastic thick shells

In this paper, a two-dimensional model for linear elastic thick shells is deduced from the three-dimensional problem of a shell thickness 2ε, ε > 0. From different scalings on the tangent and normal components of the displacement u^ε as widely used in recent works, the limit displacement appears to be Kirchhoff–Love displacement of a different type. It contains additional terms to those found in the Reissner–Mindlin model and satisfies more general equations containing the classical terms found in the literature and some new terms related to the third fundamental form. Such terms could not be well handled in the usual framework. Shear stresses across the thickness are also computed. This model appears to be appropriate to handle stiffened shells which, in fact, cannot be considered uniformly as shallow shells. As a by-product it also lays the mathematical background to justify the Reissner–Mindlin model for plates and will probably contribute to a better understanding of the locking phenomenon encountered in computational mechanics.     

Analysis of a bi-piezoelectric ceramic layer with an interfacial crack subjected to anti-plane shear and in-plane electric loading

The behaviour of a bi-piezoelectric ceramic layer with a centre interfacial crack subjected to anti-plane shear and in-plane electric loading has been studied. The dislocation density functions and the Fourier integral transform method have been employed to eliminate the problem of singular integral equations. The normalized energy release rate, stress and electrical displacement intensity factors, G/G₀,K_III/K_III0 and K_D/K_D0, respectively, were determined for different geometric and property parameters by use of two different crack surface electric boundary conditions, i.e. impermeable and permeable. It has been shown that the effects of the thickness and material constants of the piezoelectric layer on all the three parameters, i.e. G/G₀,K_III/K_III0 and K_D/K_D0 were significant.     

THE BASIC SOLUTION OF A 3-D RECTANGULAR PERMEABLE CRACK IN A PIEZOELECTRIC/PIEZOMAGNETIC COMPOSITE MATERIAL

The solution of a 3-D rectangular permeable crack in a piezoelectric/piezomagnetic composite material was investigated by using the generalized Almansi’s theorem and the Schmidt method.The problem was formulated through Fourier transform into three pairs of dual integral equations,in which the unknown variables are the displacement jumps across the crack surfaces.To solve the dual integral equations,the displacement jumps across the crack surfaces were directly expanded as a series of Jacobi polynomials.Finally,the relations between the electric filed,the magnetic flux field and the stress field near the crack edges were obtained and the efects of the shape of the rectangular crack on the stress,the electric displacement and magnetic flux intensity factors in a piezoelectric/piezomagnetic composite material were analyzed.     

Un modèle de stratifiés

A multi-particle model called M4-5n is proposed for the study of multi-layers having elastic and inelastic strains in the layers and non-continuous displacements at the interfaces between layers. We use Hellinger–Reissner's variational formulation to set up the model. Inelastic fields are supposed to be known in the modelling.     

Static analysis of anisotropic functionally graded magneto-electro-elastic beams subjected to arbitrary loading

This paper considers the analytical and semi-analytical solutions for anisotropic functionally graded magneto-electro-elastic beams subjected to an arbitrary load, which can be expanded in terms of sinusoidal series. For the generalized plane stress problem, the stress function, electric displacement function and magnetic induction function are assumed to consist of two parts, respectively. One is a product of a trigonometric function of the longitudinal coordinate (x) and an undetermined function of the thickness coordinate (z), and the other a linear polynomial of x with unknown coefficients depending on z. The governing equations satisfied by these z-dependent functions are derived. The analytical expressions of stresses, electric displacements, magnetic induction, axial force, bending moment, shear force, average electric displacement, average magnetic induction, displacements, electric potential and magnetic potential are then deduced, with integral constants determinable from the boundary conditions. The analytical solution is derived for beam with material coefficients varying exponentially along the thickness, while the semi-analytical solution is sought by making use of the sub-layer approximation for beam with an arbitrary variation of material parameters along the thickness. The present analysis is applicable to beams with various boundary conditions at the two ends. Two numerical examples are presented for validation of the theory and illustration of the effects of certain parameters.     

Three dimensional analytical solution for finite circular cylinders subjected to indirect tensile test

This paper derives a new three-dimensional (3-D) analytical solution for the indirect tensile tests standardized by ISRM (International Society for Rock Mechanics) for testing rocks, and by ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) for testing concretes. The present solution for solid circular cylinders of finite length can be considered as a 3-D counterpart of the classical two dimensional (2-D) solutions by Hertz in 1883 and by Hondros in 1959. The contacts between the two steel diametral loading platens and the curved surfaces of a cylindrical specimen of length H and diameter D are modeled as circular-to-circular Hertz contact and straight-to-circular Hertz contact for ISRM and ASTM standards respectively. The equilibrium equations of the linear elastic circular cylinder of finite length are first uncoupled by using displacement functions, which are then expressed in infinite series of some combinations of Bessel functions, hyperbolic functions, and trigonometric functions. The applied tractions are expanded in Fourier–Bessel series and boundary conditions are used to yield a system of simultaneous equations. For typical rock cylinders of 54 mm diameter subjected to ISRM indirect tensile tests, the contact width is in the order of 2 mm (or a contact angle of 4°) whereas for typical asphalt cylinders of 101.6 mm diameter subjected to ASTM indirect tensile tests the contact width is about 10 mm (or a contact angle of 12°). For such contact conditions, 50 terms in both Fourier and Fourier–Bessel series expansions are found sufficient in yielding converged solutions. The maximum hoop stress is always observed within the central portion on a circular section close to the flat end surfaces. The difference in the maximum hoop stress between the 2-D Hondros solution and the present 3-D solution increases with the aspect ratio H/D as well as Poisson’s ratio ν. When contact friction is neglected, the effect of loading platen stiffness on tensile stress in cylinders is found negligible. For the aspect ratio of H/D = 0.5 recommended by ISRM and ASTM, the error in tensile strength may be up to 15% for both typical rocks and asphalts, whereas for longer cylinders with H/D up to 2 the error ranges from 15% for highly compressible materials, and to 60% for nearly incompressible materials. The difference in compressive radial stress between the 2-D Hertz solution or 2-D Hondros solution and the present 3-D solution also increases with Poisson’s ratio and aspect ratio H/D. In summary, the 2-D solution, in general, underestimates the maximum tensile stress and cannot predict the location of the maximum hoop stress which typically locates close to the end surfaces of the cylinder.     

Mode III crack problems for two bonded functionally graded piezoelectric materials

This paper investigates the singular electromechanical field near the crack tips of an internal crack. The crack is perpendicular to the interface formed by bonding two half planes of different functionally graded piezoelectric material. The properties of two materials, such as elastic modulus, piezoelectric constant and dielectric constant, are assumed in exponential forms and vary along the crack direction. The singular integral equations for impermeable and permeable cracks are derived and solved by using the Gauss–Chebyshev integration technique. It shows that the stresses and electrical displacements around the crack tips have the conventional square root singularity. The stress intensity and electric displacement intensity factors are highly affected by the material nonhomogeneity parameters β and γ. The solutions for some degenerated problems can also be obtained.     

A mixed electric boundary value problem for a two-dimensional piezoelectric crack

In this paper, a mixed electric boundary value problem for a two-dimensional piezoelectric crack problem is presented, in the sense that the crack face is partly conducting and partly impermeable. By the analytical continuation method, the unknown electric charge distributions on the upper and lower conducting crack faces are reduced to two decoupled singular integral equations and then these two equations are converted into algebraic equations to find the full field solution. Though the results suggest that the stress intensity factors at the crack tip are identical to those of conventional piezoelectric materials, but the electric field and electric displacement are related to the electric boundary conditions on the crack faces. The electric field and electric displacement are singular not only at crack tips but also at the junctures between the impermeable part and conducting parts. Numerical results for the variations of the electric field, electric displacement field and J-integral with respect to the normalized impermeable crack length are shown. Some discussions for the energy release rate and the J-integral are made.     

On the three-dimensional vibrations of elastic prisms with skew cross-section

Three-dimensional (3-D) free vibration of an elastic prism with skew cross-section is investigated using an elasticity-based variational Ritz procedure. Specifically, the associated energy functional minimized in the Ritz procedure is formulated using a simple coordinate mapping to transform the solid skew elastic prism into a unit cube computational domain. The displacements of the prism in each direction are approximately expressed in the form of variable separation. As an enhancement to conventional use of algebraic polynomials trial series in related solid body vibration studies in the associated literature, the assumed skew prism displacement, u, v and w in the computational ξ–η–ζ skew coordinate directions, respectively, are approximated by a set of generalized coefficients multiplied by a finite triplicate Chebyshev polynomial series and boundary functions in ξ–η–ζ to ensure the satisfaction of the geometric boundary conditions of the prism. Upon invoking the stationary condition of the Lagrangian energy functional for the skew elastic prism with respect to the assumed generalized coefficients, the usual characteristic frequency equations of natural vibrations of the skew elastic prism are derived. Upper bound convergence of the first eight non-dimensional frequencies accurate to four significant figures is achieved by using up to 10–15 terms of the assumed skew prism displacement functions. First known 3-D vibration characteristics of skew elastic prisms are examined showing the effects of varying prism length ratios (ranging from skew solids to skew slender beams), as well as, varying cross-sectional side ratios and skewness, which collectively can serve as benchmark studies against which vibration modes predicted by classical Euler and shear deformable skew beam theories as well as alternative methodologies used in elastic prism vibrations of mechanical and structural components.     

Curved mixed beam elements for the analysis of thin-walled free-form arches

Summary The paper is concerned with the development and application of two curved beam elements for the numerical analysis of arbitrarily shaped arches. The first of these elements has been formulated according to the so-called shallow beam theory, whereas in the case of the second element deep-arch theory was employed. Both elements are based on modified versions of the mixed variational theorem due to Hellinger/ Reissner. Also, for all elements the number of degress-of-freedom equals six. In the final part of the paper, numerical results are presented in order to demonstrate the high accuracy of the solutions obtained herein and to evaluate the performance of the proposed elements in comparison with each other.

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Über gekrümmte Balkenelemente in gemischter Darstellung

Übersicht Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Einsatz von zwei neuentwickelten gekrümmten Balkenelementen zur numerischen Berechnung des Trag- und Deformationsverhaltens beliebiger Bögen. Dem ersten dieser Elemente liegt die Marguerresche Theorie des schwach-gekrümmten Bogens zugrunde, während es sich beim zweiten Element um ein stark gekrümmtes Element handelt. Die Formulierung beider Elemente basiert auf modifizierten Funktionalen vom Typ Hellinger/Reissner. Die Anzahl der Freiheitsgrade für jedes Element beträgt sechs. Im numerischen Teil der Arbeit werden umfangreiche Resultate über durchgeführte Testrechnungen mitgeteilt. Die Genauigkeit und praktische Relevanz der hier vorgestellten Elemente wird dadurch klar herausgestellt.