Electromechanical analysis of nonaxisymmetrically loaded piezoelectric disks with electroded faces.

An approximate two-dimensional theory is used to study the electromechanical behavior of face electroded, circular, piezoelectric (PZT) disks of the type used in transducers. Solutions are obtained for the voltage generated in both free and forced motions due to nonaxisymmetric initial conditions and loading. Both free and simply supported edge conditions are also considered. Specific numerical results are obtained for certain cases and these results are compared with corresponding experimental observations. It is found that in the presence of electroded faces and insulated edges the general nonaxisymmetric problem reduces to an equivalent axisymmetric one involving only the extensional motions as far as the voltage difference between the electrodes is concerned. It is further observed that the output voltage time history is dominated by contributions due to radial modes of motion in the edge free case, but that only the thickness modes of motion contribute to this voltage in the simply supported case. This observation is relevant to transducer design since the analysis and results are vastly simpler in the latter case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]