Effect of higher order through-thickness potential on the performance of timoshenko piezoelectric smart beam finite elements

The effect of the nonlinear nature of through-thickness potential on the performance of piezoelectric beam finite elements based on Timoshenko beam theory is quantified in this parametric study. Most of the beam finite elements available in literature consider the linear though-thickness assumption for electric potential. Here in this study, results from ANSYS 2D simulation are used for comparative evaluation of the Timoshenko smart beam formulations with linear and higher order assumptions of electric potential. The higher order model gives a fairly good approximation while linear shows considerable deviation from accuracy for specific configurations of material distribution in the beam cross section. This study identifies the regimes of material configurations in which the linear assumptions can lead to significant errors.