The effective thermoelectroelastic properties of microinhomogeneous materials

The paper is concerned with composite materials which consist of a homogeneous matrix phase with a set of inclusions uniformly distributed in the matrix[ The components of these materials are considered to be ideally elastic and exhibit piezoelectric properties[ One of the variants of the self!consistent scheme\ the E}ective Field Method "EFM# is applied to calculate e}ective dielectric\ piezoelectric and thermoelastic properties of such materials\ taking into account the coupled electroelastic e}ects[ At _rst the coupled thermoelectroelastic problem for a homogeneous medium with an isolated inclusion is solved[ For an ellipsoidal inclusion and constant external _eld the solution of this problem is found in a closed analytic form[ This solution is then used in the EFM to derive the e}ective thermoelectroelastic operator for the composite containing a random array of ellipsoidal inclusions[ Explicit formulae for the electrothermoelastic constants are given for composites\ reinforced by spheroidal inclusions