Piezothermoelastic behavior of multilayered pyroelectric cylindrical actuators with weakly conducting interfaces resting on elastic foundations

An exact solution is obtained for multilayered pyroelectric cylindrical (MPC) actuators with weakly conducting interfaces subjected to thermo-electro-mechanical loading. The outer surface of the composite cylindrical actuator is supported by a Winkler-type elastic foundation. At the interface, all the thermal and mechanical quantities as well as the normal electric displacement are assumed to be continuous but the electric potential is discontinuous. The temperature fields are obtained by the transfer matrix method and the piezothermoelastic fields are developed by the state space method combined with the Cayley–Hamilton theorem. Numerical results are presented graphically to show the effects of the elastic foundation, interfacial parameters and heat transfer coefficient on the piezothermoelastic behavior of MPC actuators.