Analysis of thin piezoelectric solids by the boundary element method Original Research Article

The piezoelectric boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation is applied to analyze thin piezoelectric solids, such as thin piezoelectric films and coatings, using the boundary element method (BEM). The nearly singular integrals existing in the piezoelectric BIE as applied to thin piezoelectric solids are addressed for the 2-D case. An efficient analytical method to deal with the nearly singular integrals in the piezoelectric BIE is developed to accurately compute these integrals in the piezoelectric BEM, no matter how close the source point is to the element of integration. Promising BEM results with only a small number of elements are obtained for thin films and coatings with the thickness-to-length ratio as small as 10−6, which is sufficient for modeling many thin piezoelectric films as used in smart materials and micro-electro-mechanical systems.