Free vibration of functionally graded material beams with surface-bonded piezoelectric layers in thermal environment

Free vibration of statically thermal postbuckled functionally graded material （FGM） beams with surface-bonded piezoelectric layers subject to both temperature rise and voltage is studied. By accurately considering the axial extension and based on the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, geometrically nonlinear dynamic governing equations for FGM beams with surface-bonded piezoelectric layers subject to thermo-electro- mechanical loadings are formulated. It is assumed that the material properties of the middle FGM layer vary continuously as a power law function of the thickness coordinate, and the piezoelectric layers are isotropic and homogenous. By assuming that the amplitude of the beam vibration is small and its response is harmonic, the above mentioned non-linear partial differential equations are reduced to two sets of coupled ordinary differential equations. One is for the postbuckling, and the other is for the linear vibration of the beam superimposed upon the postbuckled configuration. Using a shooting method to solve the two sets of ordinary differential equations with fixed-fixed boundary conditions numerically, the response of postbuckling and free vibration in the vicinity of the postbuckled configuration of the beam with fixed-fixed ends and subject to transversely nonuniform heating and uniform electric field is obtained. Thermo-electric postbuckling equilibrium paths and characteristic curves of the first three natural frequencies versus the temperature, the electricity, and the material gradient parameters are plotted. It is found that the three lowest frequencies of the prebuckled beam decrease with the increase of the temperature, but those of a buckled beam increase monotonically with the temperature rise. The results also show that the tensional force produced in the piezoelectric layers by the voltage can efficiently increase the critical buckling temperature and the natural frequency.

Bending waves of a rectangular piezoelectric laminated beam

A simple nonlinear model is proposed in this paper to study the bending wave in a rectangular piezoelectric laminated beam of infinite length.Based on the constitutive relations for transversely isotropic piezoelectric materials and isotropic elastic materials,combined with some electric conditions,we derive the bending wave equation in a long rectangular piezoelectric laminated beam by using energy method.The nonlinearity considered is geometrically associated with the nonlinear normal strain in the longitudinal beam direction.The shock-wave solution,solitary-wave solution and other exact solutions of the bending wave equation are obtained by the extended F-expansion method.And by using the reductive perturbation method we derive the nonlinear Schrodinger(NLS)equation,further more,the bright and dark solitons are obtained.For those soliton solutions,and some parameters derived by the process of solving soliton solutions,some conclusions are drawn by numerical analysis with some fixed conditions.