Continuum Mechanics of Electromagnetic Solids

Abstract

Along with magnetohydrodynamics in the case of fluids, piezoelectricity is the most well-known electro-magneto-mechanical coupling. Discovered by Pierre and Jacques Curie in 1880 in such crystals as sodium chlorate, tourmaline, quartz, topax, and Rochelle salt, piezoelectricity is the appearance of an electric polarization in a crystal of appropriate symmetry when the latter is subjected to a pressure (so-called direct effect) and the deformation of such a crystal when subjected to an electric field (inverse field). The inverse effect was discovered by Lippman but experimentally verified by the Curie brothers.