SHAPE CONTROL OF COMPOSITE PLATES AND SHELLS WITH EMBEDDED ACTUATORS .2. DESIRED SHAPE SPECIFIED

The changes in shapes of fiber-reinforced composite beams, plates and shells affected by embedded piezoelectric actuators were investigated. An analytical method was developed to determine the voltages needed to achieve a specified desired shape. The method is formulated on the basis of mathematical models using two-dimensional, linear, shallow shell theory including transverse shear effects which are important in the case of sandwich construction. The solution technique is a minimization of an error function which is a measure of the difference between the deformed shape caused by the application of voltages and the desired shape. A computationally efficient, user-friendly computer code was written which is suitable for performing the numerical calculations. The code, designated as SHAPE2, gives the voltages needed to achieve specified changes in shape. To validate the method and the computer code, results generated by the code were compared to existing analytical and experimental results. The predictions provided by the SHAPE2 code were in excellent agreement with the results of the other analyses and data.