Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Smart materials, in particular piezoelectric materials and magnetoelectroelastic composites, by virtue of their electromechanical and magnetoelectric coupling, play a prominent role in modern electroceramic industry. Since the discovery of the piezoelectric effect by Pierre Currie and Jacques Curie in 1880, considerable research effort has been focused on understanding and developing structures with desirable piezoelectric characteristics for applications ranging from sensors, actuators and miniature accelerometers, to hydrophones and energy harvesting. Despite the significant progress made in enhancing the coupling characteristics between the electrical and mechanical properties of some piezoelectric structures by additive or substantive approach, significantly less research has been dedicated to understanding the electromechanical response of more advanced structures such as three-dimensional porous piezoelectric structures, grid-reinforced smart composite shells and general active and passive materials with arbitrarily oriented piezoelectric inclusions. To this end, the proposed research will focus on electromechanical response of porous piezoelectric structures, grid-reinforced piezoelectric shells, and heterogeneous materials with complex shaped piezoelectric inclusions. The proposed research builds on the applicant's previous research work and expertise on smart structures. In summary, the objectives of the proposed research program are the: (i) development of unit cell-based finite element and micromechanical models to systematically characterize porous piezoelectric structures; (ii) development of analytical and numerical micromechanical models to characterize grid-reinforced smart composite shells; (iii) development of finite element models to study heterogeneous materials with arbitrarily oriented complex shaped piezoelectric inclusions; (iv) design and optimization of porous piezoelectric structures, grid-reinforced smart composite structures, and heterogeneous materials with piezoelectric inclusions for specific applications such as structural health monitoring, actuators, hydrophones and energy harvesting by quantifying select figures of merit (e.g., acoustic impedance, piezoelectric coupling constants).