The buckling performance of a piezoelectric laminated composite plate via static method

Piezoelectric materials are widely used as actuators, due to the advantages of quick response, high sensitivity and linear strain-electric field relationship. The previous work on the piezoelectric material plate structures are not enough, however such structures play a very important role in the practical design. In this paper, the buckling performance of piezoelectric laminated composite plate (PLCP) is analyzed based on static method to parametric study the buckling control. The stress components of the matrix layer are formulated based on electro-mechanical coupling theory and Kirchhoff’s classical laminated plate theory. Buckling differential governing equation of PLCP is obtained by using the equilibrium conditions. The solution of the governing equation is assumed as a sum of a series of trigonometric shape functions, and then its expression is obtained by using static method. The effectiveness of the developed method is validated by the comparison with finite element method. Especially, the developed method can be used for engineering applications more easily, and it does not require to rebuild the calculation model as finite element method during the calculation and analysis of PLCP. The buckling performance of PLCP and its influencing factors are numerically analyzed through the developed method. The buckling performance of PLCP is reasonably increased by parametric studying different loads, laying angle, laying sequence, height of the matrix plate, and layer size. This paper is a valuable reference for the design and analysis of PLCP.