Coupled thermo-electro-mechanical analysis of smart plates embedding composite and piezoelectric layers

This article considers the static analysis of multilayered piezoelectric plates subjected to mechanical pressures and to field loads such as electric potential and temperature. The Principle of Virtual Displacements has been extended to thermo-electro-mechanical cases by including the virtual internal electric and thermal works and by writing the opportune constitutive relations. The governing equations are given in terms of three main primary variables (displacements, electric potential and temperature) and they are solved in a closed-form solution. The primary variables are expanded in the thickness direction in both Equivalent Single Layer (ESL) and Layer-Wise (LW) form with higher orders of expansion. The models proposed enable to obtain a quasi-3D description of the static thermo-electro-mechanical analysis of multilayered plates and to analyze the effects of each physical field involved. The limitations of classical theories for such analyses have also been discussed.