The Electrostriction interface (
) combines Solid Mechanics and Electrostatics together with the constitutive relationships required to model electrostriction in electrostatically actuated structures in regimes when the electric polarization can be assumed to vary linear with the applied electric field. Both the direct and inverse electrostrictive effects can be modeled.
The Electrostriction interface is available for 3D, planar 2D, and axisymmetric 2D geometries.
When this multiphysics interface is added using the Model Wizard, a
Solid Mechanics interface and an
Electrostatics interface are added to the
Model Builder.
In addition, the Multiphysics Couplings node is added, which automatically includes the multiphysics coupling feature
Electrostriction.
The full functionality of the Solid Mechanics and Electrostatics interfaces is accessible under the corresponding interfaces at the domain, boundary line, or point level in the geometry. The participating Electrostatics interface by default adds the
Charge Conservation node with its selection set to all domains, and the material type set to
Solid. This node serves to represent solid dielectric material domains. Any number of
Charge Conservation nodes can be also added manually to the interface and configured to represent either solid or nonsolid (for example, air or free space) materials.