Three-dimensional analysis of defects in a piezoelectric material

In this paper, the Green's function technique is used to develop a solution of an infinite, piezoelectric medium containing either an ellipsoidal cavity or a flat elliptical crack. The coupled elastic and electric fields both inside the cavity and on the boundary of the cavity are obtained, and the stress intensity factor and the electric field intensity factor are also obtained for an elliptical crack. It is found that; (1) the coupled elastic and electric fields inside the cavity keep uniform when the external elastic field and electric field are constant; (2) the behavior of the stress and electric field components in the neighborhood of the crack tip shows the classical type of singularity. The project supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China