Design of laminated structures using piezoelectric materials

Composite structures incorporating piezoelectric sensors and actuators are increasingly becoming important due to the offer of potential benefits in a wide range of engineering applications such as vibration and noise supression, shape control and precisition positioning. This paper presents a finit element formulation based on classical laminated plate theory for laminated structures with integrated piezoelectric layers or patches, acting as actuators. The finite element model is a single layer triangular nonconforming plate/shell element with 18 degrees of freedom for the generalized displacements, and one electrical potential degree of freedom for each piezsoelectric elementlayer or patch, witch are surface bonded on the laminate. An optimization of the patches position is performed to maximize the piezoelectric actuators efficiency as well as, the electric potential distribuition is search to reach the specified structure transverse displacement distribuition (shape control). A gradient based algorithm is used for this purpose. The model is applied in the optimization of illustrative laminated plate cases, and the results are presented and discussed.