Dynamic Analysis of Piezoelectric Fiber Composite in an Active Beam Using Homogenization and Finite Element Methods

The purpose of this work is to point out the improvement, which could be achieved through use of piezoelectric fiber composite elements in place of piezoelectric patch elements, in structural vibration systems. Therefore, we review the homogenization method for prediction of the overall properties of piezoelectric fiber composite and we propose the Periodic Medium Homogenization model. The results indicated a good correlation between our proposed model and the MoriTanaka approach. Then we considered the cases of incorporated bulk piezoelectric and piezoelectric fiber composite in two epoxy cantilevered beams loaded by static and dynamic forces. The numerical results show that, with the piezoelectric fiber composite, one can adapt the electromechanical coupling coefficient for a specific task by simply changing the fiber content. The results also suggest that increasing fiber content above 35% for the analyzed beam, will effectively result in reduced performance of the active structure.