Order and disorder in the microstructure of dielectrically nonlinear heterogeneous materials

The electrical averaging inside the composite material is carried out by means of explicit results. We obtain closed form expressions for the macroscopic or equivalent dielectric properties of the overall composite materials. This study affirms that the nonlinear electrical behaviour of such a dispersion of pseudo-oriented particles is completely defined by two specific order parameters, which depends on the given angular distribution. The theory may be applied to characterise media with different shapes of the inclusions (i.e. spheres, cylinders or planar inhomogeneities) yielding a set of procedures describing several composite materials of great technological interest.