Similitude Analyses for Piezostructures

One important aspect of adaptive structure design for commercial, industrial, and defense applications is analysis of in situ active material sensitivities after integration with the host structure. In this paper, a similitude modeling approach is illustrated which can be used to normalize wide ranges of actuator and sensor properties that occur for piezostructures of arbitrary geometry and host structure materials. Nondimensional analysis techniques are applied to simple adaptive systems, comprised of piezoceramic elements surface-bonded to cantilever beams. A theoretical development shows that the electromechanical coupling (EMC) matrix scales as the characteristic length while the piezoelectric actuator force scales as the square of the characteristic length. Quasi-similar system analysis methods are introduced in order to scale piezostructures without requiring increases in element thicknesses. Numerical results are presented for the similar and quasi-similar system analyses.