Effect of thickness stretching and electro-mechanical loading on sandwich FGM plate with piezoelectric face sheet with different boundary conditions: A semi-analytical approach

Abstract

Functionally graded material (FGM) belongs to the class of advanced composite materials with material properties that vary according to the volume fraction. FGM is the future material for smart structures, being used in place of conventional composite materials. The article aims at performing the static analysis of different types of sandwich FGM plates with a piezoelectric face sheet taking into consideration the porosity and thickness stretching effect. The problem is formulated using a variational approach and the bending solution is obtained for the first time using Galerkin Vlasov’s method. Three different types of porous sandwich plates are considered for the analysis when subjected to sinusoidally distributed mechanical and electrical loading. For the first time, a new uneven non-symmetric porosity model is put forward to capture the realistic bending behavior of the plate. The effect of boundary conditions, thickness stretching, and applied voltage on stress and deflection distribution along and across the porous plate’s surface is analyzed. It is observed that effect of the applied potential difference when assumed to be a function of position, the change in stresses and deflection are approximately 30%. This infers that voltage distribution plays a significant role in the distribution of stresses in the plate and cannot be neglected which is otherwise assumed as a constant by various researchers. To check the exactness and validity of the current formulation, various examples are discussed. The estimated results can be used as a validation study for the upcoming research on porous sandwich FGM plates with piezoelectric facesheets. Communicated by Francesco Tornabene