Opto-Piezothermoelastic Constitutive Modeling of a New 2-D Photostrictive Composite Plate Actuator

Abstract

Optical actuators can introduce non-contact remote actuation and control effect without any hard-wired connections. In this study, constitutive relations, general opto-piezo(electric)-thermo-elastic equations, and their one-dimensional (1D) form are formulated and applied to a new two-dimensional (2D) planar actuator and composite plates laminated with distributed photostrictive optical actuators. Photodeformation, pyroelectricity, and thermoelasticity are considered in the constitutive relations and coordinate transformations are used to transform the 1D local actuation characteristics to the 2D global actuator coordinate system. Mathematical model and system parameters are then calibrated with experimental data; analytical solution based simulation and experimental results are compared favorably. Thus, the proposed constitutive modeling and governing equations of distributed 2D optical actuators preserve natural photodeformation, pyroelectricity, and thermoelasticity characteristics and applicable to distributed control of 2D continuous systems.