Modeling an elastic beam with piezoelectric patches by including magnetic effects

Models for piezoelectric beams using Euler-Bernoulli small displacement theory predict the dynamics of slender beams at the low frequency accurately but are insufficient for beams vibrating at high frequencies or beams with low length-to-width aspect ratios. A more thorough model that includes the effects of rotational inertia and shear strain, Mindlin-Timoshenko small displacement theory, is needed to predict the dynamics more accurately for these cases. Moreover, existing models ignore the magnetic effects since the magnetic effects are relatively small. However, it was shown recently [10] that these effects can substantially change the controllability and stabilizability properties of even a single piezoelectric beam. In this paper, we use a variational approach to derive models that include magnetic effects for an elastic beam with two piezoelectric patches actuated by different voltage sources. Both Euler-Bernoulli and Mindlin-Timoshenko small displacement theories are considered. Due to the magnetic effects, the equations are quite different from the standard equations.