An adhesively laminated plate element for PZT smart plates

An adhesively laminated element taking into consideration peel stress is developed for a piezoelectric smart plate. In this novel finite element analysis formulation, a four node piezoelectric element is firstly derived, and an adhesive element of finite thickness with both shear and peel stiffness is sandwiched between two collocated four node plate elements to form an adhesively laminated element for a piezoelectric smart plate. In this framework of finite element analysis, because the displacement filed in this adhesively laminated element is continuous and a plate element is derived based on the Reissner–Mindlin plate theory, and thus it can be accurately applied to a thin or moderately thick host plate with bonded or debonded piezoelectric actuators and sensors. The formulation is performed for an isotropic host plate and a fiber reinforced laminate plate. Numerical results are presented to compare with those of the exact solutions for smart beams, and validate with the experimental results of the isotropic and composite host plates available in the literature. Using the present finite element analysis formulation, energy transfer stresses in the adhesive and equivalent forces induced in the host plate are investigated. The present formulation is demonstrated to allow debondings of piezoelectric patches and the debonding detection.The authors are grateful to the support of the Australian Research Council via a Discovery Projects grant (grant No: DP0346419).