Exact Results Concerning the Local Fields and Effective Properties in Piezoelectric Composites

This paper consists of two parts: (a) a concise summary and discussion is given of the recent contributions of the author in the micromechanics of piezoelectric composites. The underlying theme here is the derivation of exact connections for the local fields and effective moduli of heterogeneous piezoelectric solids. Composites of arbitrary phase geometry as well as fibrous systems are considered. (b) New results are presented on the effective behavior of fibrous piezoelectric systems. Fibrous composites with transversely isotropic constituents and cylindrical microgeometry are considered. The exact connections of the author (Benveniste (1993), Proc. R. Soc., Series A, Vol. 441, pp. 59-81) are extended to include the most generally possible overall symmetry of the composite aggregate. The other category of the new findings concerns exact expressions for the effective thermal terms of fibrous systems which possess the same shear modulus G_T.