Micromechanical modeling and experimental characterization on viscoelastic behavior of 1-3 active composites

Abstract A study on the temperature-dependent viscoelastic behavior of (1-3 active composites) 1-3 piezocomposites and bulk piezoceramic subjected to electromechanical loading is carried out. The temperature-dependent effective properties are obtained experimentally using resonance based measurement technique. Experiments are also preformed for various fiber volume fractions of 1-3 piezocomposites subjected to constant compressive prestress and cyclic electric field at elevated temperature to understand the time-dependent behavior. Based on the measurements it is observed that the viscoelastic behavior has a significant influence on the electromechanical responses of 1-3 piezocomposites. Hence a viscoelastic based numerical model (unit cell approach) is proposed to predict the time-dependent effective properties of 1-3 piezocomposites. The evaluated effective properties are incorporated in a finite element based 3-D micromechanical model to predict the time-dependent thermo-electro-mechanical behavior of 1-3 piezocomposites and compared with the experimental observations.