  Flexoelectricity is characterised by the coupling of the gradient of the
deformation and the electrical polarization in a dielectric material. A novel
micromorphic approach is presented to accommodate the resulting higher-order
gradient contributions arising in this highly-nonlinear and coupled problem
within a classical finite element setting. The formulation accounts for all
material and geometric nonlinearities, as well as the coupling between the
mechanical, electrical and micromorphic fields. The highly-nonlinear system of
governing equations are derived using the Dirichlet principle and solved using
the finite element method. A series of numerical examples serve to elucidate
the theory and to provide insight into this fascinating effect.
