All issues

A mathematical model describing the irreversible processes of polarization and deformation of polycrystalline ferroelectrics in external electric and mechanical fields of high intensity is presented, as a result of which the internal structure changes and the properties of the material change. Irreversible phenomena are modeled in a three-dimensional setting for the case of simultaneous action of an electric field and mechanical stresses. The object of the research is a representative volume in which the residual phenomena in the form of the induced and irreversible parts of the polarization vector and the strain tensor are investigated. The main task of modeling is to construct constitutive relations connecting the polarization vector and strain tensor, on the one hand, and the electric field vector and mechanical stress tensor, on the other hand. A general case is considered when the direction of the electric field may not coincide with any of the main directions of the tensor of mechanical stresses. For reversible components, the constitutive relations are constructed in the form of linear tensor equations, in which the modules of elasticity and dielectric permeability depend on the residual strain, and the piezoelectric modules depend on the residual polarization. The constitutive relations for irreversible parts are constructed in several stages. First, an auxiliary model was constructed for the ideal or unhysteretic case, when all vectors of spontaneous polarization can rotate in the fields of external forces without mutual influence on each other. A numerical method is proposed for calculating the resulting values of the maximum possible polarization and deformation values of an ideal case in the form of surface integrals over the unit sphere with the distribution density obtained from the statistical Boltzmann law. After that the estimates of the energy costs required for breaking down the mechanisms holding the domain walls are made, and the work of external fields in real and ideal cases is calculated. On the basis of this, the energy balance was derived and the constitutive relations for irreversible components in the form of equations in differentials were obtained. A scheme for the numerical solution of these equations has been developed to determine the current values of the irreversible required characteristics in the given electrical and mechanical fields. For cyclic loads, dielectric, deformation and piezoelectric hysteresis curves are plotted.

The developed model can be implanted into a finite element complex for calculating inhomogeneous residual polarization and deformation fields with subsequent determination of the physical modules of inhomogeneously polarized ceramics as a locally anisotropic body.

The paper describes the results of computer simulation of time-dependent temperature fields arising in polar dielectrics irradiated by focused electron bunches with average electron energy when analyzing with electron microscopy techniques. The mathematical model was based on solving several-dimensional nonstationary heat conduction equation with use of numerical finite element method. The approximation of thermal source was performed taking into account the estimation of initial electron distribution determined by Monte-Carlo simulation of electron trajectories. The simulation program was designed in Matlab. The geometrical modeling and calculation results demonstrated the main features of model sample heating by electron beam were presented at the given experimental parameters as well as source approximation.

An application of the invariant imbedding method to describe the interaction of 3D electromagnetic field with 2D photonic crystal of finite thickness, formed by a dielectric circular cylinder or square bars, is considered in this paper. Matrix coefficients of transmission and reflection for waves at different angles of incidence were calculated taking into account different types of polarization and non-coplanar diffraction.

Despite numerous achievements of modern science the problem of lightning initiation in an electrodeless thundercloud, the maximum electric field strength inside which is approximately an order of magnitude lower than the dielectric strength of air, remains unsolved. Although there is no doubt that discharge activity begins with the appearance of positive streamers, which can develop under approximately half the threshold electric field as compared to negative ones, it remains unexplored how cold weakly conducting streamer systems unite in a joint hot well-conducting leader channel capable of self-propagation due to effective polarization in a relatively small external field. In this study, we present a self-organizing transport model which is applied to the case of electric discharge tree formation in a thundercloud. So, the model is aimed at numerical simulation of the initial stage of lightning discharge development. Among the innovative features of the model are the absence of grid spacing, high spatiotemporal resolution, and consideration of temporal evolution of electrical parameters of transport channels. The model takes into account the widely known asymmetry between threshold fields needed for positive and negative streamers development. In our model, the resulting well-conducting leader channel forms due to collective effect of combining the currents of tens of thousands of interacting streamer channels each of which initially has negligible conductivity and temperature that does not differ from the ambient one. The model bipolar tree is a directed graph (it has both positive and negative parts). It has morphological and electrodynamic characteristics which are intermediate between laboratory long spark and developed lightning. The model has universal character which allows to use it in other tasks related to the study of transport (in the broad sense of the word) networks.