Accurate determination of transverse normal stresses in hybrid laminated panels subjected to electro-thermo-mechanical loadings

A computational procedure is presented for the accurate determination of transverse normal stresses in hybrid laminated panels consisting of bre-reinforced composite and piezoelectric layers, and subjected to mechanical, thermal and electrical loadings. The three key elements of the procedure are: (a) using through-the-thickness distributions of the response quantities of a simpler problem to e ect a dimensional reduction in the given problem, (b) adaptive improvement of the thickness distributions of the response quantities through successive applications of the Rayleigh{Ritz technique, in conjunction with the three-dimensional electro-thermo-elasticity equations for each layer, and (c) using three-dimensional divergence equations for evaluating the transverse stresses and the transverse component of the electric eld. The e ectiveness of the procedure is demonstrated by means of two numerical examples of rectangular, hybrid laminated panels. The panels had two opposite edges clamped and the other two either simply supported or clamped. In both cases, the simpler panels were the panels of the same lamination and geometry as the example problems, but with all edges simply supported