A Finite Element Model Updating Approach for the Characterisation of Piezoelectric Materials

Athanasiadis, I., Shvarts, A. , Fotouhi, S. , Kaczmarczyk, L. , Cochran, S. and Pearce, C. (2023) A Finite Element Model Updating Approach for the Characterisation of Piezoelectric Materials. 7th ECCOMAS Young Investigators Conference (YIC2023), Porto, Portugal, 19-21 June 2023.

Abstract

The physical response of piezoelectric materials is governed by the strong coupling of mechanical and electrical phenomena as their mechanical deformation generates electric potential gradients and vice versa. There has been an increasing interest in these materials due to the breadth of engineering applications where they have been successfully used, such as power harvesting and smart sensing [1, 2]. Therefore, the accurate determination of piezoelectric materials’ parameters is essential which has lead to an increasing demand for improved numerical tools to support this scope. In this work, we propose a coupled numerical framework for piezoelectric material characterisation. For our analysis, experimentally obtained electric impedance phase diagrams are used, where a cubic specimen is subjected to a voltage pulse that generates its mechanical and voltage damping oscillation. Thereafter, the experimentally obtained resonance frequencies and their amplitude are used to determine a set of objective functions that are minimised via the Finite Element Model Updating method (FEMU) in order to find the material parameters. The minimisation procedure involves a series of fully implicit dynamic FEM analyses with changing the material input parameters between simulations. The FEM analyses are performed using the open source software MoFEM [3] and the optimisation algorithms used for the material parameter calibration are found in open source libraries in python. The framework is implemented in an automated manner as the two aforementioned computational tools and the associated pre-processing and post-processing are integrated in a cloud-based JupyterHub server and are accessed by a single Jupyter notebook. The proposed framework is aimed to be used to aid new piezoelectric material technologies where more complex structures are involved and to be extended to account for more physical phenomena.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Athanasiadis, Dr Ignatios and Cochran, Professor Sandy and Fotouhi, Dr Sakineh and Shvarts, Dr Andrei and Kaczmarczyk, Professor Lukasz and Pearce, Professor Chris
• Authors: Athanasiadis, I., Shvarts, A., Fotouhi, S., Kaczmarczyk, L., Cochran, S., and Pearce, C.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering; College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Infrastructure and Environment; College of Science and Engineering > School of Engineering > Systems Power and Energy
• Research Group: Centre for Medical and Industrial Ultrasonics (C-MIU) and Glasgow Computational Engineering Centre (GCEC)

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