Effect of finite cracking on the electromechanical coupling properties of piezoelectric materials

Cracks and porosities inside the piezoelectric materials can weaken the electromechanical coupling effect, and hence influence the electromechanical coupling behavior of piezoelectric materials considerably. This paper studies the effect of internal cracking on the effective properties of piezoelectric media. It focuses on the piezoelectric medium of finite size with finite crack. The mechanical and electric fields in the piezoelectric material and the crack are formulated by singular integral method. Effects of crack size, medium border, and electric permeability of the crack on the overall electromechanical properties of the piezoelectric material are obtained and displayed graphically. In addition, the crack tip coupling electromechanical field intensity factors are also presented as they are not available in open literature for a finite crack in a finite piezoelectric media.