Electric fields in ferroelectric polymers metal structures modeling using a finite element boundary element method

Significant advances in ferroelectric polymers for use in electromechanical-active transduction-sensor applications, as well as strong interest in special capacitive structures involving ferroelectric metal complex structures, have occurred very recently. The applications, initially oriented toward military use, such as surveillance systems for underwater detection, large area hydrophone arrays, have spread to high-voltage engineering, transducers for robotics, advanced nonlinear capacitors, and other civilian applications. A finite element method (FEM) using Galerkin´s method, coupled with a boundary element method (BEM) numerical code, are described in this paper as a device for a precise modeling in space and time. The formulation presented for nonlinear, nonhomogeneous media can be extended readily to accommodate material anisotropy by specifying /spl par//spl epsiv//spl par/ as a tensor. Several practical examples and applications are presented.