Abstract
Piezoelectric effects are exploited in an increasing number of micro- and nano-electro-mechanical systems. In particular, energy harvesting devices convert ambient energy (i.e. mechanical pressure) into electrical energy and their study is nowadays a very important and challenging field of research. In this paper, the attention is focused on piezoelectric textiles. Due to the importance of computational modeling to understand the influence that micro-scale geometry and constitutive variables have on the macroscopic behavior, a homogenization strategy is developed. The macroscopic structure behaviour is obtained defining a reference volume element (RVE) at the micro-scale. The geometry of the RVE is based on the microstructural properties of the material under consideration and consists in piezoelectric polymeric nano-fibers subjected to electromechanical contact constraints. This paper outlines theory and numerical implementation issues for the homogenization procedure. Moreover, within this approach the average response resulting from the analysis of different fiber configurations at the microscale is determined providing a multiphysics constitutive model for the macro-scale.
Highlights
E lectrospinning is a simple and versatile method for generating ultrathin fibers from a rich variety of materials that include polymers, composites and ceramics [1]
The geometry of the reference volume element (RVE) is based on the microstructural properties of the material under consideration and consists in piezoelectric polymeric nano-fibers subjected to electromechanical contact constraints
When an electric field E is applied across the sheets, they either contract in thickness and expand along the stretch direction or expand in thickness and contract along the stretch direction depending on which way the field is applied
Summary
E lectrospinning is a simple and versatile method for generating ultrathin fibers from a rich variety of materials that include polymers, composites and ceramics [1]. From the chemical point of view, the PVDF material is built joining chains of CH2CF2, where C indicates the carbon, H the hydrogen and F the fluorine atoms It is produced in large thin clear sheets and through a stretching and poling process it is possible to give piezoelectric properties to the resulting thin layer. The objective of this paper is to model the behaviour of the aforementioned PVDF sheet by a multiscale and multiphysics approach This requires the definition of a representative volume element (RVE) at the microscale, the formulation and solution of a microscale boundary value problem (BVP), and the development of a suitable micro-macro scale transition. Based on the presented framework, several RVE geometries are analysed and the homogenized coefficients determined
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