Experimental characterization and viscoelastic modeling for thermo-mechanical creep of 1-3 piezocomposites

1-3 piezocomposites are often subjected to mechanical pre-stress under elevated temperatures in naval and offshore applications, actuators, and so on, where the presence of the ductile epoxy matrix causes considerable creep in the system. This deteriorates the system efficiency and its overall performance. To address this issue, experiments are performed to capture the electromechanical response for thermo-mechanical creep of 1-3 piezocomposites for different fiber volume fractions under various thermal loads, wherein mechanical depolarization is observed. The piezo-coupling coefficient is observed to degrade. Higher thermal loads resulted in an increase in creep strain coupled with a decrease in creep polarization. A Kelvin–Voigt fractal derivative viscoelastic model is used to capture the creep strain. The creep strain is decomposed into ferroelastic and anelastic parts. The evolution of creep polarization is obtained using the ferroelastic component of the creep strain. The model predictions are found to be in agreement with the experimental observations.