Large displacement framework for buckling and formation studies of elasticplates

We study the problem of changing the geometric configuration of an elastic plate by means of attached and embedded actuators, for this purpose we use the so-called "full" von Karman plate equations, incorporating geometric no nlinearities, and we develop a model for internal actuation based On the sa me principles and assumptions. We show that the von Karman model predicts a zimuthal buckling for a thin, centrally supported disk-shaped plate with un iform transverse boundary loading and we indicate that behavior of this typ e poses a significant problem in attempting reformation of the elastic plat e into a rotationally symmetric, bowl-shaped shell, a problem of some impor tance in projected applications. We study two different systems of actuator deployment and indicate why one of them appears to deal with this problem more effectively than the other.