Effect of a biasing electric field on the propagation of symmetric Lamb waves in piezoelectric plates

This paper is concerned with the effect of a biasing electric field on the propagation of Lamb waves in a piezoelectric plate. On the basis of three dimensional linear elastic equations and piezoelectric constitutive relations, the differential equations of motion under a biasing electric field are obtained and solved. Due to the symmetry of the plate, there are symmetric and antisymmetric modes with respect to the median plane of the piezoelectric plate. According to the characteristics of symmetric modes (odd potential state) and antisymmetric modes (even potential state), the phase velocity equations of symmetric and antisymmetric modes of Lamb wave propagation are obtained for both electrically open and shorted cases. The effect of a biasing electric field on the phase velocity, electromechanical coupling coefficient, stress field and mechanical displacement of symmetric and antisymmetric Lamb wave modes are discussed in this paper and an accompanying paper respectively. It is shown that the biasing electric field has significant effect on the phase velocity and electromechanical coupling coefficient, the time delay owning to the velocity change is useful for high voltage measurement and temperature compensation, the increase in the electromechanical coupling coefficient can be used to improve the efficiency of transduction