As smart structures are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our daily life, the need for efficient modeling electromechanical coupling devices is also rapidly advancing. Smart structures are often made of piezoelectric materials such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT), which exhibits strong nonlinear behavior known as hysteresis effect under a large applied electric field. There have been numerous modeling techniques that are able to capture such an effect; some techniques are suitable for obtaining physical insights into the micro-structure of the material, while other techniques are better-suited to practical structural analyses. In this paper, we aim to achieve the latter. We propose a simplified phenomenological macroscopic model of a nonlinear ferroelectric actuator. The assumption is based on the direct relation between the irreversible strain and irreversible electric field, and the consequently irreversible polarization. The proposed model is then implemented in a finite element framework, in which the main features such as local return mapping and the tangent moduli are derived. The outcomes of the model are compared and validated with experimental data. Therefore, the development presented in this paper can be a useful tool for the modeling of nonlinear ferroelectric actuators.
Keywords: PZT; ferroelectric; phenomenological; piezoelectric.