An analytical approach to three-dimensional coupled thermoelectroelastic analysis of functionally graded piezoelectric plates

This article deals with the sampling surfaces method developed recently by the authors and its implementation for the three-dimensional coupled steady-state thermoelectroelastic analysis of functionally graded piezoelectric laminated plates subjected to thermal loading. The sampling surfaces formulation is based on choosing inside the nth layer [Formula: see text] not equally spaced sampling surfaces parallel to the middle surface of the plate in order to introduce temperatures, electric potentials, and displacements of these surfaces as basic plate variables. Such choice of unknowns with the consequent use of Lagrange polynomials of degree [Formula: see text] in the thickness direction for each layer permits the presentation of the proposed functionally graded piezoelectric plate formulation in a very compact form. The sampling surfaces are located inside each layer at Chebyshev polynomial nodes that allow one to minimize uniformly the error due to the Lagrange interpolation. As a result, the sampling surfaces method can be applied efficiently to analytical solutions for functionally graded piezoelectric laminated plates, which asymptotically approach the three-dimensional exact solutions of thermoelectroelasticity as [Formula: see text].