Transient thermopiezoelectric response of a one-dimensional functionally graded piezoelectric medium to a moving heat source

The thermopiezoelectricity problem of a one-dimensional (1-D), finite length, functionally graded medium excited by a moving heat source is investigated in this paper. The Lord and Shulman theory of generalized coupled thermoelasticity is employed to account for both the finite speed of thermal waves and coupling of temperature field with displacement and electric fields. Except thermal relaxation time and specific heat, which are taken to be constant for simplicity, all other properties are assumed to vary exponentially along the length through an arbitrary non-homogeneity index. Laplace transform has been used to eliminate the time effect, and three coupled fields, namely, displacement, temperature, and electric fields are obtained analytically in the Laplace domain. The solutions are then inverted to time domain using a numerical Laplace inversion method. Numerical examples are displayed to illustrate the effects of non-homogeneity index, length and thermal relaxation time on the results. When the medium is homogeneous, the results of the current paper are reduced to exactly the same results available in the literature.