Time-harmonic BEM for 2-D piezoelectricity applied to eigenvalue problems

Abstract We will derive the fundamental generalized displacement solution, using the Radon transform, and present the direct formulation of the time-harmonic boundary element method (BEM) for the two-dimensional general piezoelectric solids. The fundamental solution consists of the static singular and the dynamics regular parts; the former, evaluated analytically, is the fundamental solution for the static problem and the latter is given by a line integral along the unit circle. The static BEM is a component of the time-harmonic BEM, which is formulated following the physical interpretation of Somigliana’s identity in terms of the fundamental generalized line force and dislocation solutions obtained through the Stroh–Lekhnitskii (SL) formalism. The time-harmonic BEM is obtained by adding the boundary integrals for the dynamic regular part which, from the original double integral representation over the boundary element and the unit circle, are reduced to simple line integrals along the unit circle. The BEM will be applied to the determination of the eigen frequencies of piezoelectric resonators. The eigenvalue problem deals with full non-symmetric complex-valued matrices whose components depend non-linearly on the frequency. A comparative study will be made of non-linear eigenvalue solvers: QZ algorithm and the implicitly restarted Arnoldi method (IRAM). The FEM results whose accuracy is well established serve as the basis of the comparison. It is found that the IRAM is faster and has more control over the solution procedure than the QZ algorithm. The use of the time-harmonic fundamental solution provides a clean boundary only formulation of the BEM and, when applied to the eigenvalue problems with IRAM, provides eigen frequencies accurate enough to be used for industrial applications. It supersedes the dual reciprocity BEM and challenges to replace the FEM designed for the eigenvalue problems for piezoelectricity.