An appropriate FE model for through-thickness variation of displacement and potential in thin/moderately thick smart laminates

A finite element model for the analysis of fibre-reinforced laminated composite plates embedded and/or surface bonded with piezoelectric layers and subjected to mechanical loading and/or electric potential has been presented in this paper. The proposed model is applicable for the analysis of thin-to-moderately thick plates. No restriction has been imposed on the pattern of variation of the potential across the plate thickness so that the potential can have any value even within the core. As the plates considered here are not too thick, the structural deformation has been modelled by single layer theory where the effect of shear deformation has been taken into account following Mindlinʹs hypothesis. For the electric potential, layer-wise theory has been applied, as the through-thickness variation of electric potential does not follow any specific pattern. This is the first attempt wherein a combination of single layer theory and layer-wise approach has been used to solve the coupled problem of piezoelectricity in plate bending. Numerical examples have been carried out to study the performance of the proposed approach