Investigation of the effective response of 2-1-2 piezoelectric composites

The question of the e_ective response of two-phase hybrid “fibrous-laminate” piezoelectric composites, with periodic microstructure, is adressed with two homogenization approaches: a full-field numerical scheme based on Fourier transform and a simplifying approach relying on a decoupled two-step homogenisation process. In the case of a two-phase epoxy/PZT composite, this latter is shown to overestimate out-of-plane e_ective piezoelectric coe_cients.