Axiomatic/asymptotic technique applied to refined theories for piezoelectric plates

This article is devoted to the evaluation of refined theories for static response analysis of piezoelectric plate. The Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF) is employed to generate the refined plate models. The CUF allows the hierarchical implementation of refined models based on any-order expressions of the unknown variables. Equivalent single layer (ESL) and layerwise (LW) approaches are used to generate the refined models. The governing equations are obtained considering Navier-type, closed-form solutions. The axiomatic/asymptotic technique is employed in order to evaluate the relevance of each model term. This technique computes the relevance of a model term by measuring the error introduced with its deactivation with respect to a reference solution. The axiomatic/asymptotic technique is applied considering the sensor and actuator configurations for piezoelectric plates. Moreover, the analyses are performed taking into account the influence of the length-to-thickness ratio (a/h) and the use of isotropic or orthotropic materials. "Best" models are proposed and the stress/displacement components and electric potential distributions are evaluated by means of these reduced models. © 2015