Thermo-electro-mechanical postbuckling of piezoelectric FG-CNTRC beams with geometric imperfections

Abstract

This paper presents thermo-electro-mechanical postbuckling analysis of geometrically imperfect functionally graded carbon nanotube-reinforced composite (FG-CNTRC) hybrid beams that are integrated with surface-bonded piezoelectric actuators. The material properties of FG-CNTRCs are assumed to be temperature-dependent and graded in the thickness direction. By using a generic imperfection function, various possible imperfections with different shapes and locations in the beam are considered. The theoretical formulations are based on the first-order shear deformation beam theory with von-Kármán nonlinearity. A differential quadrature approximation based iteration process is employed to obtain the postbuckling equilibrium path of piezoelectric FG-CNTRC hybrid beams under thermo-electro-mechanical loading. Parametric studies are conducted to examine the effect of geometric imperfection, distribution pattern and volume fraction of carbon nanotubes, temperature rise, actuator voltage, beam geometry and boundary conditions on the thermo-electro-mechanical postbuckling behaviour. The results show that the thermo-electro-mechanical postbuckling is considerably affected by the imperfection mode, half-wave number, location and amplitude, as well as the temperature rise and boundary conditions. The effect of applied actuator voltage is much less pronounced but tends to be relatively more noticeable as the slenderness ratio increases.