Dynamic effective property of fibrous piezoelectric composites with spring- or membrane-type imperfect interfaces

Abstract

The present paper studies the dynamic effective property of piezoelectric composites embedded with cylindrical piezoelectric fibers under anti-plane harmonic electro-elastic waves. By using the dynamic generalized self-consistent method (DGSM) of electro-elastic coupling wave, the problem of randomly distributed cylindrical fibers in a piezoelectric medium can be analyzed in terms of a representative volume element with a coated fiber embedded in an equivalent effective medium. The interfaces between the fibers and the matrix are assumed to be imperfect which are here modeled as spring- or membrane-type interfaces. Through wave function expansion method and an iterative method, the effective piezoelectrically stiffened shear modulus and the effective wave number are obtained. Examples are conducted to verify the present solutions and to illustrate the dependence of the effective piezoelectrically stiffened shear modulus on the wave number (frequency) as well as the interface properties. The special size effect related to interfacial imperfection is also discussed.