LAUSR

A method is proposed for evaluating the potential piezoelectric response, that a ferroelectric material would exhibit after full poling, from elastic and dielectric measurements of the unpoled ceramic material. The method is based on the observation that the softening in a ferroelectric phase with respect to the paraelectric phase is of piezoelectric origin, and is tested on BaTiO3. The angular averages of the piezoelectric softening in unpoled ceramics are calculated for ferroelectric phases of different symmetries. The expression of the orientational average with the piezoelectric and dielectric constants of single crystal tetragonal BaTiO3 from the literature reproduces well the softening of the Young's modulus of unpoled ceramic BaTiO3, after a correction for the porosity. The agreement is good in the temperature region sufficiently far from the Curie temperature and from the transition to the orthorhombic phase, where the effect of fluctuations should be negligible, but deviations are found outside t...