Smart Composite Plate Shape Control Using Piezoelectric Materials I. Finite Element Formulation

For the aircraft industry, the ability to change and control the shape of the structure has been a challenging problem. In the current work the shape control of fiber-reinforced composite plate with embedded piezoelectric actuators and sensors is investigated. A finite element formulation is developed for modeling a laminated composite plate, with a distributed piezoelectric actuators and sensors subjected to both mechanical and electrical loads. A simple higher order shear deformation theory with Hamilton's principle is used to formulate the equations of motion. The model is valid for both segmented and continuous piezoelectric elements which can be either surface bonded or embedded in the laminated plate. A four-node, bilinear, isoparametric, rectangular element with seven degrees of freedom at each node is developed . The electric potential is treated as a generalized electric coordinates hie the generalized displacement coordinates at the mid-plane of the actuator and sensor layers. The results obtained by the model are compared to the available analytical and the finite element results.