Exact geometry SaS solid-shell element for 3D stress analysis of FGM piezoelectric structures

Abstract

Abstract A hybrid-mixed functionally graded material (FGM) piezoelectric four-node solid-shell element through the sampling surfaces (SaS) method is proposed. The SaS formulation is based on choosing inside the shell N SaS parallel to the middle surface in order to introduce the displacements and electric potentials of these surfaces as fundamental shell unknowns. Such choice of unknowns with the use of Lagrange polynomials of degree N-1 in through-thickness interpolations of the displacements, strains, electric potential, electric field and material properties leads to a robust FGM piezoelectric shell formulation. The inner SaS are located at Chebyshev polynomial nodes that make it possible to minimize uniformly the error due to Lagrange interpolation. To implement the effective analytical integration throughout the element, the extended assumed natural strain (ANS) method is employed. As a result, the piezoelectric four-node solid-shell element exhibits a superior performance in the case of coarse meshes. To circumvent shear and membrane locking, the hybrid stress-strain solid-shell formulation via the Hu-Washizu variational principle is employed. The developed solid-shell element could be useful for the 3D stress analysis of FGMstructures because the SaS method allows obtaining the solutions with a prescribed accuracy, which asymptotically approach the exact solutions of electroelasticity as the number of SaS tends to infinity.