With rapidly increasing use of piezoelectric materials in high-temperature environment, it is becoming increasingly important for reliable design of piezoelectric devices to study thermo-electroelastic damage and fracture mechanism. As the first step, a thermo-piezoelectric damage constitutive model is presented from continuum damage mechanics and effective properties of a damaged material are connected with both damages and the initial coefficients according to the theorem of energy equivalence in this paper. Then the finite element equations for a thermo-electroelastic damage problem are given by use of the virtual work principle. Finally, as a numerical illustration example, damage fields around a crack-tip in a three-point bending PZT-5H beam subjected to different thermal loads are calculated and analyzed. It is shown from both the damage curves and contours that influence of environmental temperature on the mechanical damage distribution is great but slight on the electrical damage.
