SIMILITUDE ANALYSES FOR PIEZOSTRUCTURES

One important aspect of adaptive structure design for commercial, indu strial, and defense applications is analysis of in situ active materia l sensitivities after integration with the host structure. in this pap er, a similitude modeling approach is illustrated which can be used to normalize wide ranges of actuator and sensor properties that occur fo r piezostructures of arbitrary geometry and host structure materials. Nondimensional analysis techniques are applied to simple adaptive syst ems, comprised of piezoceramic elements surface-bonded to cantilever b eams, A theoretical development shows that the electromechanical coupl ing (EMC) matrix scales as the characteristic length while the piezoel ectric actuator force scales as the square of the characteristic lengt h. Quasisimilar system analysis methods are introduced in order to sca le piezostructures without requiring increases in element thicknesses. Numerical results are presented For the similar and quasi-similar sys tem analyses.