Cellular space-charge polymer film, also called cellular piezoelectret, has very large piezoelectric effect due to their unique microvoid structure. In this article, the cellular piezoelectret film is considered to be a periodic composite material with closed-cell microvoids aligned periodically. Three dimensional finite element modeling is carried out to obtain the effective elastic modulus and piezoelectric coefficients. Sensitivity analysis was presented by modeling the effec- tive electromechanical properties with different individual variable, including material constants and void shape parameters. By assuming a relation between void shape and void volume fraction, the finite element model can simulate quite well the inflation experiments of the voided charged Polypropylene film published in literature. Finally, the finite element model is used to explore the voided charge polymer film with non-uniform distribution of the trapped charges on the internal surface of voids. It was found that the resultant overall piezoelectric coefficients will be more significant if charges are closely gathered in the central area, and sparse in the around area of the internal surface of voids.
The classical Hashin-Shtrikman variational principle was re-generalized to the heterogeneous piezoelectric materials.The auxiliary problem is very much simplified by selecting the reference medium as a linearly isotropic elastic medium.The electromechanical fields in the inhomogeneous piezoelectrics are simulated by introducing into the homogeneous reference medium certain eigenstresses and eigen electric fields.A closed-form solution can be obtained for the disturbance fields,which is convenient for the manipulation of the energy functional.As an application,a two-phase piezoelectric composite with nonpiezoelectric matrix is considered.Expressions of upper and lower bounds for the overall electromechanical moduli of the composite can be developed.These bounds are shown better than the Voigt-Reuss type ones.
