The use of piezoelectric stress stiffening to enhance buckling of laminated plates

Abstract

A technique for enhancement of buckling loads of composite plates is proposed. The technique relies on using stress stiffening to create a non-zero tensile force acting along the plate plane which ultimately permits the application of higher external compressive forces that lead to traditional buckling instabilities. The idea is to completely restrain the plate movements in its plane direction, at all edges, and to apply voltages to pairs of symmetrically bonded piezoelectric patches. This voltage is applied such that the piezoelectric patches contract resulting in a uniform tensile force over the plate plane.