Saint-Venant end effects in anti-plane shear for classes of linear piezoelectric materials

This paper is concerned with further investigation of the effect of mechanical/electrical coupling on the decay of Saint-Venant enf effects in linear piezoelectricity. This decay is studied in the context of anti-plane shear deformation. The traction-boundary value problem with prescribed surface charge can be formulated as an oblique derivative boundary-value problem for an elliptic system. Energy-decay estimates using differential inequality methods are used to study the axial decay of solution on a semi infinite strip subjected to non-zero boundary conditions only at the near end. This analysis is carried out for a rather general class of materials. We show that piezoelectric end effects penetrate further into the strip than their elastic counterparts.