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This paper is concerned with the static analysis of simply supported cross-ply substrate plates integrated with a layer of piezoelectric fiber reinforced composite material undergoing nonlinear deformations. The von Kármán type nonlinear strain displacement relations and first order shear deformation theory are used to formulate the variational model of this electromechanical coupled problem. Subsequently, Galerkin procedure is employed to derive the nonlinear algebraic governing equations which are solved by usingNewton-Raphson method. The results suggest the potential use of PFRC material for distributed control of nonlinear deformations of smart composite structures. The effect of variation of piezoelectric fiber orientation on the actuating capability of the PFRC actuator for counteracting the nonlinear deformations of the smart composite plates has also been investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the analysis of vertically reinforced 1-3 piezoelectric composite materials as the material for the distributed actuator of smart laminated composite plates. A simple micromechanics model has been derived to predict the effective elastic and piezoelectric coefficients of these piezoelectric composites which are useful for the three dimensional analysis of smart structures. The main concern of this study is to investigate the performance of a layer of this vertically reinforced 1-3 piezoelectric composite material as the constraining layer of the active constrained layer damping (ACLD) treatment. A finite element model has been developed for analyzing the active constrained layer damping of laminated symmetric and antisymmetric cross-ply and angle-ply composite plates integrated with the patches of such ACLD treatment. Both in-plane and out-of-plane actuation of the constraining layer of the ACLD treatment have been utilized for deriving the finite element model. The analysis revealed that the vertical actuation dominates over the in-plane actuation. Particular emphasis has been placed on investigating the performance of the patches when the orientation angle of the piezoelectric fibers of the constraining layer is varied in the two mutually orthogonal vertical planes. Also, the effect of different boundary conditions on the performance of the patches has been studied. The analysis revealed that the vertically reinforced 1-3 piezoelectric composites which are in general being used for the distributed sensors can be potentially used for the distributed actuators of high performance light-weight smart structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performance of a layer of piezoelectric fiber reinforced composite (PFRC) material as the distributed actuator for smart composite plates has been investigated in this paper. The investigation is performed by finding the exact solutions for static analysis of simply supported symmetric and anti-symmetric cross-ply laminated plates integrated with a layer of PFRC material. The results suggest the potential use of PFRC materials for the distributed actuators of smart structures with both thick and thin substrate composite plates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]