FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF LAMINATED COMPOSITE STRUCTURES CONTAINING DISTRIBUTED PIEZOELECTRIC ACTUATORS AND SENSORS

A finite element formulation is developed to model the response of laminated composite plates containing distributed piezoceramic actuators and sensors. The stress equations of motion are derived using the variational principle with respect to the total structural and electrical potential energy. These stress equations are converted to a two-dimensional finite element equation using a First Order Shear Deformation Laminated Plate Theory. The finite element equation is based on the QUAD4 isoparametric quadrilateral element which is currently used in such FEA codes as COSMIC/NASTRAN and ASTROS. This new piezoelectric finite element formulation was incorporated into an FEA computer code and validated by comparison with published experimental and numerical results.