Electro-mechanical analysis of piezoelectric patch bonding to beams

Due to the outstanding electromechanical coupling property, piezoelectric materials played an important role in smart structures, structural health monitoring, strain measurement, and energy harvesting. In these applications, the piezoelectric materials were usually fabricated in form of patches and bonded on the surfaces of host structures. As a result, the interaction between the surface-bonded piezoelectric patch with the host structures should be well understood to design or manufacture. However, very limited research was available in the literatures. This works derived the coupled governing equation of the strains of the piezoelectric patch and surface of the host structures including the electromechanical coupling effect of piezoelectric materials. The dynamic one was also presented and the effect of the circuit resistance was also considered. Some numerical examples were given to demonstrate the present method and the results were compared with those by finite element method.