Abstract
Dynamic buckling analysis of FGM plates has not been accomplished so far. In the present paper, vibration and dynamic buckling of FGM rectangular plates with surface-bonded or embedded piezoelectric sensors and actuators subjected to thermo-electro-mechanical loading conditions are investigated. A finite element formulation based on a higher-order shear deformation theory is developed. Both initial geometric imperfections of the plate and temperature-dependency of the material properties are taken into account. Dynamic buckling of plates already pre-stressed by other forms of loading conditions is assumed to occur under suddenly applied thermal or mechanical loads. A nine-node second order Lagrangian element, an efficient numerical algorithm for solving the resulted highly non-linear governing equations, and an instability criterion already proposed by the author are employed. A simple negative velocity feedback control is used to actively control the dynamic response of the plate. Results show that generally, initial geometric imperfections lead to an increased fundamental bending natural frequency and decreased buckling loads. Furthermore, buckling mitigation due to utilizing integrated piezoelectric sensors and actuators is mainly achieved in extremely high gain values. Therefore, the piezoelectricity effect on the buckling load is small in applicable voltages. It is also noticed that the temperature-dependency and initial geometric imperfections remarkably affect the buckling loads.