Design of novel morphing structures based on bistable composites with piezoceramic actuators

Abstract

Instead of attempts to avoid the large out-of-plane deformations of multilayered fiber-reinforced composites caused by residual stresses, these deformations can be advantageously used for technical applications such as novel morphing structures, where only a discontinuous energy impulse of an actuator is necessary to change the configuration of the structure. For the design of such innovative morphing structures with piezoelectric actuators, novel nonlinear semi-analytical and numerical simulation models have been developed and verified experimentally.