Modeling the response of polycrystalline ferroelectrics to high-intensity electric and mechanical fields

A mathematical model describing the irreversible processes of polarization and deformation of polycrystalline ferroelectrics in external electric and mechanical fields of high intensity is presented, as a result of which the internal structure changes and the properties of the material change. Irreversible phenomena are modeled in a three-dimensional setting for the case of simultaneous action of an electric field and mechanical stresses. The object of the research is a representative volume in which the residual phenomena in the form of the induced and irreversible parts of the polarization vector and the strain tensor are investigated. The main task of modeling is to construct constitutive relations connecting the polarization vector and strain tensor, on the one hand, and the electric field vector and mechanical stress tensor, on the other hand. A general case is considered when the direction of the electric field may not coincide with any of the main directions of the tensor of mechanical stresses. For reversible components, the constitutive relations are constructed in the form of linear tensor equations, in which the modules of elasticity and dielectric permeability depend on the residual strain, and the piezoelectric modules depend on the residual polarization. The constitutive relations for irreversible parts are constructed in several stages. First, an auxiliary model was constructed for the ideal or unhysteretic case, when all vectors of spontaneous polarization can rotate in the fields of external forces without mutual influence on each other. A numerical method is proposed for calculating the resulting values of the maximum possible polarization and deformation values of an ideal case in the form of surface integrals over the unit sphere with the distribution density obtained from the statistical Boltzmann law. After that the estimates of the energy costs required for breaking down the mechanisms holding the domain walls are made, and the work of external fields in real and ideal cases is calculated. On the basis of this, the energy balance was derived and the constitutive relations for irreversible components in the form of equations in differentials were obtained. A scheme for the numerical solution of these equations has been developed to determine the current values of the irreversible required characteristics in the given electrical and mechanical fields. For cyclic loads, dielectric, deformation and piezoelectric hysteresis curves are plotted.
The developed model can be implanted into a finite element complex for calculating inhomogeneous residual polarization and deformation fields with subsequent determination of the physical modules of inhomogeneously polarized ceramics as a locally anisotropic body.