Interfacial effect on the electromechanical behaviors of piezoelectric/elastic composite smart beams

An efficient electromechanical coupling model is developed to analyze the effect of the interfacial properties on the mechanical behaviors of piezoelectric/elastic composite smart beams. The interface of the composite smart beams is assumed to be imperfectly bonded and is modeled by the shear-lag model. An asymptotic expansion approximation is employed to construct the electric potential distribution in the piezoelectric layer. The governing equation is derived for the piezoelectric/elastic composite smart beams taking into account the electromechanical coupling effect and the interfacial imperfection. In the numerical analysis, both the mechanical and the electrical loadings are considered. The mechanical behaviors of the composite smart beams are illustrated graphically for three types of boundary conditions: (a) clamped supported–freely supported (C-F), (b) clamped supported–hinged supported (C-H), and (c) hinged supported–hinged supported (H-H). The results show that the interfacial properties have significant effect on the mechanical behaviors of the piezoelectric/elastic composite smart beams. For mechanically actuated case, a larger interfacial imperfection causes a larger transverse deflection, while it is contrary for electrically actuated case.