Complete characterization of piezoceramic materials by means of two block-shaped test samples

We present an approach enabling entire characterization of piezoceramic materials. Contrary to the IEEE/ CENELEC Standard on Piezoelectricity, which is commonly applied for material characterization, the so-called inverse method requires only two block-shaped test samples. The method is based on a comparison of numerical simulations and measurement results for the frequency-resolved electrical impedance. Thereby, the aimed material parameters are iteratively updated so that simulations match measurements as well as possible. We utilize the identification procedure to characterize the piezoceramic material PIC255 as well as PIC155 from PI Ceramic, both of crystal class 6mm. In contrast to the parameters provided by the manufacturer, the identified data set leads to accurate simulation results for electrical and mechanical quantities of piezoceramic materials. This also holds if one predicts the behavior of geometrical shapes (e.g., disk) that are not considered within the inverse method. Moreover, we exploit the identification procedure to determine temperature dependences of the material parameters in the temperature range of -35°C to 130°C. To some extent, the parameters of PIC255 and PIC155 strongly depend on temperature. Nevertheless, the resulting electromechanical coupling factors for both materials remain nearly constant in the investigated temperature range.