Experimental characterization and numerical modeling of time-dependent electro-mechanical response of piezocomposites

•Viscoelastic behavior of 1–3 piezocomposites under electromechanical loading.•Experimental setup has been developed.•A thermodynamic based micromechanical model has been proposed.•The proposed model is implemented into the finite element frame work.•Figure of Merit for under water and biomedical applications is evaluated.

The experimental and theoretical characterization on viscoelastic behavior of 1–3 piezocomposites subjected to electromechanical loading is carried out. The effective properties are measured experimentally using the resonance based measurement technique and experiments are also preformed to understand the time-dependent electromechanical behavior for various fiber volume fractions of 1–3 piezocomposites subjected to constant prestress and cyclic electric field. The experimental results show that 1–3 piezocomposites exhibit viscoelastic behavior. Hence time-dependent effective properties of 1–3 piezocomposites are evaluated using the proposed viscoelastic based numerical model (unit cell approach). The evaluated effective properties are incorporated in a finite element based 3-D micromechanical model to predict the time-dependent electromechanical response of 1–3 piezocomposites and compared with the experimental observations. The developed micromechanical model is extended to evaluate the figure of merit (FoM) for underwater and bio-medical applications subjected to constant compressive prestress under cyclic electric field.