AN INVARIANT TREATMENT OF INTERFACIAL DISCONTINUITIES IN PIEZOELECTRIC MEDIA

Interfacial discontinuities are examined in piezoelectric media of general anisotropy. The analysis relies on decomposing second-rank tensors at an interface into exterior and interior parts, and on decomposing first-rank tensors at an interface into normal and tangential parts. The solutions depend on three independent interfacial operators, one fourth-rank, one third-rank, and one second-rank tensors. By constructing appropriate augmented matrices, the topic can be treated systematically as that of uncoupled field equations. This leads to a concise organization of the solutions of inclusion and inhomogeneity problems. In applications exact results are given for the matrix interfacial quantities under uniform boundary conditions and/or under uniform transformation fields in the inclusion.