SHAPE CONTROL OF PIEZOELECTRIC SHELL STRUCTURES

As major structures used in space engineering, plates and shells often endure varied loads. Working performance of some structures, such as airfoil and antenna, are very sensitive to their shapes and deformations. Thus, it is necessary to control the structure shape by some technologies. This paper presents a finite element formulation for the numerical simulation of the spatial curved shell structures with piezoelectric actuators, in which the host shells and piezoelectric patches are combined with constraint equations directly. The use of the constraint equations reduces the number of the DOF and improves the computation efficiency. Based on the proposed model, the optimum structural shape and a perfect voltage distribution can be obtained by using the linear least square method. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed model.