This paper presents the analytical and experimental results on optimal placement of piezoceramic actuators for shape control of beam structures. The objective is to determine the optimum piezoceramic actuator locations and voltages to minimize the error between the desired shape and the achieved shape. The analytical model for predicting beam deformation due to a piezoelectric actuator is based...

Standard shear samples used for piezoceramic characterization lead to underestimation of the piezoelectric shear coefficients due to its dynamical clamping at resonance. This work presents the application of Alemany et al. ́s automatic iterative method to the resonance of a non-Standard shear sample, in order to determine the related complex parameters of piezoceramics, thus including losses, fr...

A metamodel-based approach is developed to optimize the force and displacement performance of a piezoceramic bimorph actuator. A segmented design with a variable piezoceramic layer thickness is proposed, where the thicknesses of discrete piezoceramic segments are used as the design variables. Design of experiments and metamodeling techniques are employed to construct computationally inexpensive...

Functionally Graded Materials (FGMs) possess continuously graded material properties and are characterized by spatially varying microstructures. The smooth variation of properties may offer advantages such as reduction of stress concentration and increased bonding strength. Recently, this concept has been explored in piezoelectric materials to improve properties and to increase the lifetime of ...

We consider geometric and material nonlinearities when studying numerically the transient three-dimensional elastic deformations of a plate with piezoceramic elements perfectly bonded to its top and bottom surfaces, and analyze the effect of the shape and the size of the piezoceramic actuators on increasing the buckling load of the plate. The applied compressive edge load is assumed to increase...

An increasing number of manufacturing processes rely on ultra-high speed and accuracy machines. Piezoceramic actuators are being utilized as parts of such machines. So far, only linear and switched-capacitor power supplies have been used for driving piezoceramic actuators in such applications. This paper proposes a switch-mode power supply to reduce cost and increase system efficiency. In the p...

We present a mathematical framework to provide general well-posedness and approximation results for a laminated curved beam. The layered beam consists of an elastic core layer, symmentric viscoelastic damping layers, symmetric constraining layers and bonded piezoceramic patch pairs on the outer surfaces. The model includes unbounded inputs from the piezoceramic patches, hysteresis and shear in ...

Rubber-steel-layered structures are used in many engineering applications. Laminated rubber-steel bearing, as a type of seismic isolation device, is one of the most important applications of the rubber-steel-layered structures. Interfacial debonding in rubber-steel-layered structures is a typical failure mode, which can severely reduce their load-bearing capacity. In this paper, the authors dev...