A new piezoelectric shell element and its application in static shape control

In this paper, a new three-dimensional piezoelectric thin shell element containing an<br />integrated distributed piezoelectric sensor and actuator is proposed. The distributed piezoelectric sensor<br />layer monitors the structural shape deformation due to the direct effect and the distributed actuator layer<br />suppresses the deflection via the converse piezoelectric effect. A finite element formulation is presented<br />for static response of laminated shell with piezoelectric sensors/actuators. An eight-node and forty-DOF<br />shell element is built. The performance of the shell elements is improved by reduced integration<br />technique. The static shape control of structure is derived. The shell element is verified by calculating<br />piezoelectric polymeric PVDF bimorph beam. The results agreed with those obtained by theoretical<br />analysis, Tzou and Tseng (1990) and Hwang and Park (1993) fairly well. At last, the static shape control<br />of a paraboloidal antenna is presented.