Piezoelectric suppression of thermoelastic snap-through in active piezolaminated curved shells

Abstract

In this study, the piezoelectric suppression of thermoelastic snap-through for curved laminated shells was first investigated by using active piezoelectric layers. In order to derive the finite element equations of motion related to active piezolaminated curved shells, the total Lagrangian formulation was applied to Hamilton's virtual work principles for largely deformed structures with small strain. The arc-length method was applied to the iterative Newton-Raphson scheme in order to determine the load-displacement tracking. Present results indicate that an eccentric piezoelectric patch can passively eliminate unstable postbuckling or snap-through without a piezoelectric actuation, and that thermoelastic snap-through can simply be suppressed by using piezoelectric actuation, while exhibiting softening-hardening phenomena with positive stiffness properties.