Electro-elastic fields around an elliptical hole in an electrostrictive plate: Isotropic and uncoupled cases

Abstract

This work studies on the classical electro-mechanical problem of an electrostrictive plate with an elliptical hole. In the present work, the isotropic case for the electrostrictive plate is considered based on the small strain assumption. The solutions are then provided by the complex variable method for an infinite plate with an elliptic hole or a crack. Moreover, FEM analyses where a 3D electrostrictive element is defined in ABAQUS user subroutine UEL are presented for a finite plate. Numerical results are given to discuss the effects of plate geometries, applied electric fields, material properties, the electric body force and Maxwell stress tensor on the stress fields around the elliptical hole. It is found that the traditional uncoupled treatment may cause an unpredictable inaccuracy and a coupled analysis is needed in general.