Bending and Buckling Analyses of Composite Laminates with and without Presence of Damage and its Passive Control with Optimized Piezoelectric Patch Location

Dipak Kumar Maiti

Dipak Kumar Maiti Professor, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, WB 721302, India

Keywords: Composite Plate, Finite Element Method, Piezoelectric Fibre Composites, Optimization

Abstract

This work presents an efficient technique to enhance the bending and buckling characteristics of a smart composite plate. This paper discusses about the employment of piezoelectric fibre composite patches (PFCP) in their optimized location using unified particle swarm optimization (UPSO) for enhancing the performance and thereby reducing the effects of internal flaws. A finite element formulation based on Inverse Hyperbolic Shear Deformation Theory (IHSDT) for handling bending and buckling analysis of a smart composite plate is used in the present work. In addition to the best performance, reduction in weight of piezoelectric material is obtained as we employ a segmented piezo patch to overcome the degradation in buckling strength due to damage in a composite plate, which indeed addresses the design issues.