Vibration and dynamic response of functionally graded plates with piezoelectric actuators in thermal environments

This paper deals with the nonlinear vibration and dynamic response of a functionally graded material (FGM) plate with surface-bonded piezoelectric layers in thermal environments. Heat conduction and temperature-dependent material properties are both taken into account. The temperature field considered is assumed to be a uniform distribution over the plate surface and varied in the thickness direction of the plate, and the electric field is assumed to be the transverse component EzEz only. Material properties of the substrate FGM layer are assumed to be temperature-dependent, and graded in the thickness direction according to a simple power-law distribution in terms of the volume fractions of the constituents, whereas the material properties of piezoelectric layers are assumed to be independent of the temperature and the electric field. The nonlinear formulations are based on the higher-order shear deformation plate theory and general von Kármán-type equation, which includes thermo-piezoelectric effects. The numerical illustrations concern nonlinear vibration characteristics of functional graded plates with fully covered piezoelectric actuators under different sets of thermal and electric loading conditions. The effects of temperature change, control voltage and volume fraction distribution on the nonlinear vibration and dynamic response are examined in detail.