Abstract
Piezoelectric materials characterization is a challenging problem involving physical concepts, electrical and mechanical measurements and numerical optimization techniques. Piezoelectric ceramics such as Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) belong to the 6 mm symmetry class, which requires five elastic, three piezoelectric and two dielectric constants to fully represent the material properties. If losses are considered, the material properties can be represented by complex numbers. In this case, 20 independent material constants are required to obtain the full model. Several numerical methods have been used to adjust the theoretical models to the experimental results. The continuous improvement of the computer processing ability has allowed the use of a specific numerical method, the Finite Element Method (FEM), to iteratively solve the problem of finding the piezoelectric constants. This review presents the recent advances in the numerical characterization of 6 mm piezoelectric materials from experimental electrical impedance curves. The basic strategy consists in measuring the electrical impedance curve of a piezoelectric disk, and then combining the Finite Element Method with an iterative algorithm to find a set of material properties that minimizes the difference between the numerical impedance curve and the experimental one. Different methods to validate the results are also discussed. Examples of characterization of some common piezoelectric ceramics are presented to show the practical application of the described methods.
Highlights
Piezoelectric ceramics can be found in a great variety of electronic and electromechanical devices.Applications range from cell phones to medical imaging ultrasound, ignition systems to energy harvesting or from motors and actuators to power ultrasound systems for chemical processing.The use of CAD tools for designing electromechanical systems based on piezoelectric ceramics is a common practice in the industry
The behavior of such systems can be reproduced with a high degree of confidence by using the Finite Element Method (FEM) or similar numerical tools
This paper presents the recent advances in the characterization of piezoelectric ceramics by
Summary
Piezoelectric ceramics can be found in a great variety of electronic and electromechanical devices. This review presents a methodology to identify the parameters in the piezoelectric model based on the minimization of the difference between the experimental and the FEM simulations. Using FEM modeling, the properties of a piezoelectric ceramic can be identified by minimizing the difference between the numerical and the experimental impedance data The application of this technique is recent, and the first references are from about fifteen years ago [8,9,10,11]. Another work using the fusion of acoustic and impendence data, presented by Li and co-authors [27], shows a method to determine the elastic constants from acoustic pulse-echo measurements reducing the number of constants to be identified This methodology can be applied to samples with high degree of anisotropy [28].
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