Double-Superposition Assumption for Piezoelectric Laminate Beam Theory

Abstract

An attempt is made to extend the double superposition hypothesis for elastic laminate analysis to piezoelectric laminate structure analysis. In addition to the displacement, the double superposition technique is also applied to the electric potential. The double-superposition hypothesis for piezoelectric laminate analysis can predict the zigzag feature of the field variables along the transverse direction in piezoelectric laminates. Moreover, the elastic field computational cost of double superposition assumption is no more than that of high-order shear theories for global coordinates, and the degrees of freedom by double superposition assumption for electric potential are much fewer than those by layerwise models for electric potential. It will be seen from the numerical examples that the good accuracy and lower computational cost can be presented by the double-superposition assumption for piezoelectric laminate beams.