Computational Homogenization of Cement-Based Porous Piezoelectric Composites with Random Structure

The finite element method (FEM) is used to characterize the effective thermo-electromechanical material properties of cement-based piezoelectric ceramic composites in this paper. The micromechanics representative volume element (RVE) approach is used with distribution of piezoelectric particles in the porous cement matrix. The effects of the piezoelectric particle volume fraction and pore volume fraction on the effective composite properties are determined using sets of different boundary conditions. Microscale homogenization is carried out through the analysis of particles which are randomly distributed in a homogenized matrix.