Effective properties of polycrystalline piezoelectric ceramics

The paper focuses on the overall linear elastic, piezoelectric and dielectr ic response of polycrystalline piezoelectric ceramics. The effective materi al constants are calculated using the effective medium approximation and si ngle-crystal data for the individual grains. This self-consistent approach takes into account the full electromechanical interaction coupling of the g rains with their surroundings in a statistical way and makes use of the rig orous treatment of the piezoelectric inclusion problem and explicit represe ntations of the electroelastic Eshelby tensor recently published in the lit erature. Numerical results for the effective properties of BaTiO3 ceramics for different microstructural arrangements of crystal orientations are pres ented. Although we restricted ourselves to the linear material behaviour ne glecting all nonlinear effects, the calculated results show remarkable agre ement with experimental data and give an interesting insight into the effec t of elastic, piezoelectric and dielectric interactions on the macroscopic material behaviour.