Crack Surface Frictional Contact Modelling in Piezoelectric Materials

摘要

Piezoelectric materials exhibit an electromechanical coupling which allows for their use as sensors or energy harvesting devices (direct piezoelectric effect) or actuators and shape control devices (inverse piezoelectric effect). They are applied in many technological sectors of current interest such as the aerospace and automotive industries, and they are generally constructed in block form or in a thin laminated composite. The study of the integrity of such materials in their various forms and small sizes is still a challenge nowadays. To gain a better understanding of these systems, this work presents a crack surface contact formulation which makes it possible to study the integrity of these advanced materials under more realistic crack surface multifield operational conditions. The formulation uses the BEM for computing the elastic influence coefficients and contact operators over the augmented Lagrangian to enforce contact constraints on the crack surface, in the presence of electric fields. The capabilities of this methodology are illustrated solving a benchmark problem.