Buckling and Postbuckling of Anisotropic Laminated Cylindrical Shells with Piezoelectric Fiber Reinforced Composite Actuators

Abstract

Compressive postbuckling under thermal environments and thermal postbuckling due to uniform temperature field are presented for an anisotropic laminated cylindrical thin shell with piezoelectric fiber reinforced composite (PFRC) actuators. The governing equations are based on the classical shell theory with a von Kármán-Donnell-type of kinematic nonlinearity and including the extension-twist, extension-flexural and flexural-twist couplings. The thermo-piezoelectric effects are also included and the material properties are assumed to be temperature-dependent and the electric field considered only has non-zero-valued component E Z . The nonlinear prebuckling deformations and initial geometric imperfections of the shell are both taken into account. A singular perturbation technique is employed to determine buckling loads (temperature) and postbuckling equilibrium paths. The numerical illustrations concern the compressive and thermal postbuckling behavior of perfect and imperfect, anisotropic laminated cylindrical shells with fully covered or embedded PFRC actuators under different sets of thermal and electric loading conditions, from which results for monolithic piezoelectric actuators are obtained as comparators. The results reveal that, in the compressive buckling case, the control voltage only has a small effect on the postbuckling load-deflection curves of the shell with PFRC actuators, whereas in the thermal buckling case, the effect of control voltage is more pronounced for the shell with PFRC actuators, compared to the results of the same shell with monolithic piezoelectric actuators.