Concrete beam with piezoelectric sensors in ABAQUS

Hello,

I am trying to model piezoelectric sensors on a concrete beam in ABAQUS. Since I am using brttile cracking model, I have to use ABAQUS / Explicit. But piezoelectric elements are not available in ABAQUS / Explicit.

In some papers I saw that the piezoelectricity modeling problem in ABAQUS / Explicit is solved by replacing it by an equivalent Thermo-Mechanical problem. Does anybody know how to accomplish this?

Do you have any suggestions? Are there any other ways to model piezoelectricity in ABAQUS / Explicit?

Thank you very much,