Deformation of Carbon Nano Tubes Reinforced Hybrid Laminated Composite Plates induced by Piezoelectric Actuators

Piezoelectric materials, typically used as intelligent materials, can respond according to the design demands of the composite structures autonomously. The excitation of piezoelectric actuators generates the bending effect on the hybrid composite plates. An analytical methodology is developed to calculate the displacements of simply supported laminated composite plates induced by piezoelectric actuators and validate the results by generating MATLAB code. Further, the laminated hybrid composite plates reinforced with carbon nanotubes(CNT) are excited by piezoelectric actuators bonded to the surface on both sides with a variable electrical voltage across the thickness. The effects of location, size and thickness ratio of piezoelectric actuators on the deflection of hybrid composite plates are carried out by extending the code. The transverse displacements vary linearly with the applied voltage and size of the piezoelectric actuators. The effect of CNT volume fraction and the position of CNT lamina plays a vital role in deflections, and also it is observed that maximum displacements decrease rapidly as thickness ratio increases from 0.5 to 5 and from 10 to 50, the maximum displacements gradually decrease. Hence, it illustrated that the present technique provides a simple solution for predicting and controlling the deformed shape of reinforced hybrid composite plates induced by distributed piezoelectric actuators.