The effective thermoelectroelastic properties of microinhomogeneous materials

The paper is concerned with composite materials which consist of a homogene ous matrix phase with a set of inclusions uniformly distributed in the matr ix. The components of these materials are considered to be ideally elastic and exhibit piezoelectric properties. One of the variants of the self-consi stent scheme, the Effective Field Method (EFM) is applied to calculate effe ctive dielectric, piezoelectric and thermoelastic properties of such materi als, taking into account the coupled electroelastic effects. At first the c oupled thermoelectroelastic problem for a homogeneous medium with an isolat ed inclusion is solved. For an ellipsoidal inclusion and constant external field the solution of this problem is found in a closed analytic form. This solution is then used in the EFM to derive the effective thermoelectroelas tic operator for the composite containing a random array of ellipsoidal inc lusions. Explicit formulae for the electrothermoelastic constants are given for composites, reinforced by spheroidal inclusions. (C) 1999 Elsevier Sci ence Ltd. All rights reserved.