Problems of radially polarized piezoelastic bodies

In this paper, three displacement functions are introduced to simplify the basic equations of a radially polarized, spherically isotropic, piezoelectric medium. By expanding the displacement functions as well as the electric potential in terms of spherical harmonics, the basic equations are converted to an uncoupled Euler type, second-order ordinary differential equation and a coupled system of three such ones. Based on the well-known solution to the Euler equation, the general solution for the static problem is obtained. Some axisymmetric problems are then considered. It is noted that the present analysis is an extension of that of spherically isotropic pure elasticity (Chen, 1966). (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.