An efficient hybrid plate model for accurate analysis of smart composite laminates

Abstract

An efficient C 0 continuous two-dimensional finite element model for the accurate analysis of laminated composite plates embedded and/or surface bonded with piezoelectric layers and subjected to mechanical loading and/or electrical potential has been presented in this article. The problem of smart laminates involves the coupling between mechanical and electrical fields. The mechanical/structural component is modeled by an efficient equivalent single-layer plate theory, which ensures interlaminar shear stress continuity and zero transverse shear stress conditions at the top and bottom of the plate surfaces. Moreover, this theory contains unknowns at the reference plane (i.e. the mid-plane) only. The electrical field is modeled using layer-wise theory, which contains the unknowns at each layer interfaces. In order to calculate the accurate through-the-thickness transverse shear stress variations, a simple approach based on least square error method is applied to the three-dimensional equilibrium equations of the plate problem at the postprocessing stage, after in-plane stresses are calculated using the finite element model based on the above-mentioned refined plate theory and layer-wise theory. The proposed combine model, which may be called as a refined hybrid plate model, is implemented to analyze the coupled problem of piezoelectricity in laminated composites and sandwich plate bending.

Active mechanical cloaking for unsupervised damage resilience in programmable elastic metamaterials

“…Multi-physical mechanics involving external stimuli like electrical and magnetic fields, light, temperature and shape memory effects have recently been exploited to achieve on-demand programmability in lattice metamaterials [1]. For example, the effective elastic moduli can be actively controlled in piezoelectric [34][35][36] lattices as a function of voltage, leading to modulation of stiffer or softer behaviour of a single lattice architecture in an on-demand framework as per operational demands, even after it is manufactured [37,38]. A magnetic field can lead to such on-demand modulation of effective elastic properties (including sign reversal), but in a contactless framework [39,40].…”

An Efficient Spectral Element Model with Electric DOFs for the Static and Dynamic Analysis of a Piezoelectric Bimorph

“…However, the motion of a single layer, as well as the induced electric potential, is extremely small. To achieve practically meaningful actuation or sensing capabilities in PZT devices, a piezoelectric bimorph consisting of two PZT layers is commonly used for the reason that it can produce flexural deformation significantly larger than the length or thickness deformation of the individual layers [1][2][3][4][5][6]. However, the applications of the piezoelectric bimorph require the development of admissible approaches entailing capabilities to predict the global responses of the bimorph structure, such as the deflection and natural frequencies.…”

“…One is the classical laminated plate theory (CLPT) [8,9], and the other is the shear deformation theory, which branches out into first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) [10,11] and higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) [12,13]. The ESL model is simple and capable of predicting the global responses of the bimorph, but it does not account for the nonlinear distribution of the electric potential across piezoelectric layers as observed from 3D solutions [4]. This shortcoming inspired the researchers to develop layer-wise theory [4,[14][15][16] or the sublayer theory [2,7,[17][18][19] for approximation of the electric potential.…”

“…The ESL model is simple and capable of predicting the global responses of the bimorph, but it does not account for the nonlinear distribution of the electric potential across piezoelectric layers as observed from 3D solutions [4]. This shortcoming inspired the researchers to develop layer-wise theory [4,[14][15][16] or the sublayer theory [2,7,[17][18][19] for approximation of the electric potential. In the latter case, the piezoelectric layer is divided into appropriate number of sublayers along the thickness direction and a linear through-the-thickness electric potential distribution for each sublayer is assumed.…”