A study is carried out to compare the non-linear behaviour of 1-3 piezocomposites with different volume fractions and bulk piezoceramics. Experiments are conducted to measure the electrical displacement and strain on piezocomposites and ceramics under high cyclic electrical loading. A thermodynamically consistent framework, combining the phenomenological and micromechanical models, is developed to predict the coupled behavior. Volume fractions of three distinct uni-axial variants (instead of six variants) are used as internal variables to describe the microscopic state of the material. In this model, the grain boundary effects are taken into account by introducing the back fields (electric field and stress) as non-linear kinematic hardening functions. In order to calculate the effective properties (elastic, piezoelectric, and dielectric constants) of piezocomposites for different volume fractions, an analytical model based on equivalent layered approach is proposed. The predicted effective properties are incorporated in the proposed model, and the classical hysteresis (electrical displacement versus electric field) as well as butterfly curves (strain versus electric field) is simulated. Comparison between the experiments and the simulations shows that this model can reproduce the characteristics of non-linear coupled response. It is observed that the variation in fiber volume fraction has a significant influence on the response of the 1-3 piezocomposites. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.