Three Dimensional Analysis of Laminated Cylindrical Panels with Piezoelectric Layers

A semi-analytical solution is presented for three dimensional elastic analysis of finitelylong, simply supported, orthotropic, laminated cylindrical panels with piezoelectric layers subjected to outer pressure and electrostatic excitation. Both the direct and inverse piezoelectric effects are investigated. The solution is obtained through reducing the highly coupled partial differential equations (PDE's) of equilibrium to ordinary differential equations (ODE's) with variable coefficients by means of trigonometric function expansion in longitudinal and circumferential directions. The resulting ODE's are solved by dividing the radial domain into some finite subdivisions and imposing necessary continuity conditions between the adjacent sub-layers. Some numerical examples are presented for the stress distribution and electric responses due to outer pressure in both sensorial and actuating states. Also, the effect of geometric properties on the sensitivity and actuating power of the structure are investigated.