Electro-elastic analysis of piezoelectric laminated plates

Based on the Kirchhoff hypothesis of normal-remain-normal, the present work analyses piezoelectric laminated plates, wherein poled piezoelectric laminae are transversely isotropic and function as actuators. A quadric electric field is induced inside a piezoelectric lamina under a given applied voltage and mechanical bending. The governing equations for the piezoelectric laminated plate derived from the principle of virtual work in terms of the electric enthalpy have the same forms as those for a conventional composite laminated plate. We use rectangular sandwich plates of Al/PZT/Al and PZT/Al/PZT with four simply supported edges to demonstrate the prediction of the maximum bending stress in the PZT layer. The analytic solutions are verified by three-dimensional finite element analysis.