Interlaminar stresses in piezoelectric laminated composite shells under electric, thermal and mechanical loads

•An analytical method to solve interlaminar stresses in piezoelectric laminated shells.•Effect of electric loading on the interlaminar stresses depends on the stacking sequence.•Effect of thermal loading on the interlaminar stress depends on the electric loading.•Optimizing the reinforced direction makes internaminar stresses decrease.

An analytical method is presented to investigate the influences of electric, thermal and mechanical loads on interlaminar stresses in piezoelectric laminated composite shells with two simply supported ends. Based on the geometrical and loading forms of piezoelectric composite laminated shells, the axisymmetrical model of a three dimensional orthotropic thermo-piezoelectric elastic problem is found to obtain an analytical solution containing some undetermined constants for a separate piezoelectric layer or fiber reinforced layer, where the reinforced direction of fiber layer and the stacking sequence of piezoelectric laminated composite shells may be arbitrary. The undetermined constants involved in the analytical solution are obtained by means of the continuity conditions between layers, the boundary conditions at internal and external surface of piezoelectric laminated composite shells and the supported conditions at two ends. Therefore, an exact solution for interlaminar stresses in piezoelectric laminated composite shells is obtained. The results show that the amplitude of interlaminar shear stresses in piezoelectric composite laminated shells can be reduced by choosing a particular values of electric filed for different stacking sequence, and the interlaminar shear stresses in piezoelectric laminated shells with fiber sub-layer [θ/−θ] are also reduced to a smaller value by optimizing the reinforced direction of fiber sub-layer [θ/−θ], so that it is easily to control the delamination failure of the piezoelectric fiber reinforced laminated shells.

Graphical abstractComparison between analytical solution and finite element (FE) solution.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide