Thermo-electro-radial coupling nonlinear instability of piezoelectric shear deformable nanoshells via nonlocal elasticity theory

Abstract

In the present article, the size-dependent nonlinear thermo-electro-mechanical instability of piezoelectric nanoshells under a combined action of hydrostatic pressure, lateral electric field and uniform changes in temperature is examined in the presence of the geometric imperfection sensitivity. The non-classical formulations given herein are built upon the nonlocal continuum elasticity within the framework of the shear deformation shell theory incorporating von Karman nonlinearity due to large deflection. The nonlocal-based governing equations are constructed based on the minimum potential energy of the system and then they are deduced using boundary layer theory of shell buckling. By applying an efficient perturbation-based solution methodology, closed-form solutions including explicit expressions are extracted for nonlocal postbuckling equilibrium paths of thermo-electro-mechanical excited piezoelectric nanoshells. It is displayed that for the both local and nonlocal shell models, the lateral applied electric fields with positive and negative signs induce, respectively, initial contraction and expansion in the piezoelectric nanoshell which causes in order to increase and decrease the critical shortening relevant to the electro-radial instability of piezoelectric nanoshell.