Effective electromechanical coupling coefficient of adaptive structures with integrated multi-functional piezoelectric structural fiber composites

This paper presents a linear computational homogenization framework to evaluate the effective (or generalized) electromechanical coupling coefficient (EMCC) of adaptive structures with piezoelectric structural fiber (PSF) composite elements. The PSF consists of a silicon carbide (SiC) or carbon core fiber as reinforcement to a fragile piezo-ceramic shell. For the micro-scale analysis, a micromechanics model based on the variational asymptotic method for unit cell homogenization (VAMUCH) is used to evaluate the overall electromechanical properties of the PSF composites. At the macro-scale, a finite element (FE) analysis with the commercial FE code ABAQUS is performed to evaluate the effective EMCC for structures with the PSF composite patches. The EMCC is postprocessed from free-vibrations analysis under short-circuit (SC) and open-circuit (OC) electrodes of the patches. This linear two-scale computational framework may be useful for the optimal design of active structure multi-functional composites which can be used for multi-functional applications such as structural health monitoring, power harvest, vibration sensing and control, damping, and shape control through anisotropic actuation.