Coupled thermo-electro-mechanical analysis of sandwiched hybrid functionally graded elastic material and piezoelectric plates under thermal loads

Abstract

Based on Reissner’s mixed variational theorem, a weak-form formulation of finite layer methods is developed for the three-dimensional coupled thermo-electro-mechanical analysis of simply-supported, functionally graded elastic material plates integrated with surface-bonded piezoelectric layers and under thermal loads. The material properties of the functionally graded elastic material core are assumed to obey the power-law distributions varying through-the-thickness coordinate of the core according to the volume fractions of the constituents, and those of the functionally graded elastic material core and piezoelectric face sheets are also temperature dependent. The effective material properties of the functionally graded elastic material are estimated using the Mori-Tanaka scheme. Two different thermal conditions, i.e. the convection conditions and specified temperature conditions, on the top and bottom surfaces of the plate are considered. The accuracies and convergence rates of the finite layer methods with various orders used for expanding the elastic and electric variables in the thickness direction are assessed by comparing their solutions with the exact three-dimensional ones available in the literature.