Articles techniques et présentations

Piezoceramic crystals have broad application from simple strain measurement on cantilever beams, energy harvesting, and up to evolving areas of photonics. Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) ceramic slabs are used for generating modulation on fibers; fiber lasers etc for various applications like interferometric fiber sensing applications. The axial strain on the PZT slab is very critical and it is responsible for uniform optical modulation. PZT has different resonant modes due to its dimension and geometry. The resonant states, displacement and the axial strain of the ceramic crystals are analyzed.

The present study focuses on the Finite Element Modeling (FEM) of Piezoceramics slab for axial strain distribution analysis. The design requirement is to generate a symmetric and uniform axial strain by applying an electric potential. The modeling is done using COMSOL Multiphysics® software version 5.3 and it is utilized to evaluate the performance of the structure with a variety of materials and different applied voltage across the structure. For analysis, frequency domain is selected in study module. The frequency sweep is set for a range of frequencies range up to which the analysis has to be carried out. The FEM software simulates the displacement and axial strain response of the PZTs for different frequencies.

PZT 8 slab is modeled and it shows multiple resonant states. During frequency analysis the admittance, the electric property of the ceramics is found varying with respect to the frequency. The frequency response is shown in the Figure 1. Strain distribution on the PZT slab varies with frequency of electric potential. Figure 2 shows a strain distribution on the PZT slab and it is observed that more uniform strain is at the center portion compared to other regions. Through FEM analysis the required uniform and symmetric strain distribution on the PZT slab was obtained. The significance of the dimensions and material composition of the ceramics on resonant states, strain and displacement are discussed. The obtained FEM results regarding the axial strain of the PZT slab is verified comparing with experimental results and it is discussed in the paper.