Static stress analysis of piezoelectric composite laminates under piezoelectric excitation

Abstract

This paper demonstrates a stress function based approach for predicting the static stresses in piezoelectric composite laminates under piezoelectric excitation. The stress function based approach is quite different from the traditional plate and shell theories that adopt the displacement functions as initial assumptions, where the stress boundary conditions are prescribed at the surfaces and applied at the free edges so that the stress components satisfy the boundary conditions automatically. The principle of complementary virtual work is adopted to derive the governing equations, resulting in a set of fourth order differential equations that can be further solved by a general eigen value problem. The proposed methodology is computationally quite efficient and accurate compared with the three dimensional finite element method. We believe the proposed approach can be used as an efficient tool for analysis of static stresses in piezoelectric composite structures.