Wave propagation in piezoelectric cylinders with surface effects

Due to the large ratio of surface-to-volume, surface effects can become significant in the physical properties of piezoelectric nano-sized structures. In this work, we incorporate surface effects into wave propagation analysis of a nano-sized transversely isotropic piezoelectric cylinder. To this purpose, a novel approach based on state-space formalism is used to derive the approximate governing equations. The wave propagation in a transversely isotropic piezoelectric cylinder with surface effects is then studied and exact solution is presented. Numerical results are finally given to show that surface effects will play a very pronounced role in wave propagation of piezoelectric nano-cylinders.