Postbuckling of shear deformable laminated plates with piezoelectric actuators under complex loading conditions

Postbuckling analysis is presented for a simply supported, shear deformable laminated plate with piezoelectric actuators subjected to the combined act ion of mechanical, electric and thermal loads. The temperature field consid ered is assumed to be a uniform distribution over the plate surface and thr ough the plate thickness and the electric field is assumed to be the transv erse component E-Z only. The material properties are assumed to be independ ent of the temperature and the electric field. The governing equations of a laminated plate are based on Reddy's higher order shear deformation plate theory that includes thermo-piezoelectric effects. The initial geometric im perfection of the plate is taken into account. Two cases of the in-plane bo undary conditions are considered. A perturbation technique is employed to d etermine buckling loads and postbuckling equilibrium paths. The numerical i llustrations concern the postbuckling behavior of perfect and imperfect, sy mmetric cross-ply and antisymmetric angle-ply laminated plates with fully c overed or embedded piezoelectric actuators under different sets of thermal and electric loading conditions. The effects played by temperature rise, ap plied voltage, the character of in-plane boundary conditions, transverse sh ear deformation, plate aspect ratio, fiber orientation and stacking sequenc e as well as initial geometric imperfections are studied. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.