Piezo-electric control of stiffened panels subject to interactive buckling

The paper examines the feasibility of piezo-electric control of stiffened plates carrying axial compression and subject to interaction of local and overall buckling. A simple control strategy involving piezo-electric patches along the tips of the stiffeners carrying equal and opposite electric fields to resist bending of the stiffeners was found to effectively counteract the adverse effects of mode interaction and imperfection-sensitivity. For the dynamic problem, this strategy needed to be supplemented with patches attached to the surfaces of the plate in the middle of the panel to damp out local buckling oscillations. Two panels were considered, these being scaled replicas of each other. This enabled an examination of the scaling laws of response with practical applications in view. The results demonstrate that the structural performance of optimally designed stiffened structures can be enhanced with minimal energy consumption by appropriately designed piezo-electric patch configuration.