Bending of Viscoelastic Beams under Piezoelectric Control – Analytical and Massively Parallel Computational Simulations

2. INTRODUCTION Piezoelectric effects are of increasing importance in the control and sensing of structural element deflections. Elastic piezoelectric theory has been extensively developed (Leibowitz & Vinson 1993). Hilton et al. (1997) have presented an extended bibliography and discussed past contributions as well as formulated an analytical nonlinear theory of anisotropic piezoelectric-thermo-viscoelasticity. Only a limited number of analytical and experimental publications on linear piezo-viscoelastic materials may be found in the literature (Holloway & Vinogradov 1997, Vinogradov & Holloway 1997). Yi et al. (1996) have formulated finite element solutions to demonstrate viscoelastic material damping. Hilton et al. (1997, 1998a, b) and Beldica et al. (1998a, b, c) have applied this theory to a number of linear viscoelastic bending and aero-viscoelastic problems, such as creep flutter and torsional divergence and the response of piezo-viscoelastic structures to aerodynamic noise. Yi et al. (1997) have formulated and carried out finite element solutions for a number of piezoelectric viscoelastic problems.