Smart Laminated Shells and Deflection Control Strategy with Optimal Voltage

Abstract

The present paper deals with a finite element analysis procedure for smart laminated composite shells based on Reissner' s principle. Hermitian polynomials have been used for the development of curved surfaces and these permit the construction of any arbitrary shell geometry. The piezoelectric constitutive equations are incorporated in the shell structural constitutive equations. The finite element codes are accordingly developed and results are obtained for various composite laminated shell panels. A deflection control strategy is proposed based on pseudo-inversion and modified Lavenberg-Marquardt's optimization algorithms. A smart laminated beam is considered as a case study for evaluating the proposed deflection control strategy. Results are obtained for various locations of the piezoelectric patches and it is observed that the strategy can be effectively used for the deflection control of a beam. The method so developed may also be applied to any piezo-laminated plate or shell configuration.