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This work deals with modeling of 1-3 thermoelectroelastic composites with a doubly periodic array of piezoelectric fibers under arbitrary combination of mechanical, electrical loads and a uniform temperature field. The finite element method (FEM) based on a unit cell model is extended to take into account the thermoelectroelastic effect. The FE predictions of effective properties for several typical periodic microstructures are presented, and their influences on effective properties are discussed. A comparison with the Mori-Tanaka method is made to estimate the application scope of micromechanics. The study is useful for the design and assessment of composites.

In this paper, the three-dimensional (3D) four-step ($1\times 1$) rectangular braided composites are analyzed, the internal yarn spatial topology and mechanical model are determined, a new geometric model, which uses a cubic spline curve to fit yarn trajectory, is presented. The new geometric model can be divided into three types of unit cell models which are the interior, surface and corner unit cell. Based on the new proposed geometric model and the stiffness averaging theory, the corresponding elastic constants are predicted. The predicted numerical results are calculated, and compared with the experimental results. Numerical examples indicate that the numerical calculations well agree with the experimental results. Error values between numerical calculations and experimental results are less than 7.5%. The numerical results verify the validity and accuracy of the new geometrical model.