Boundary Element Modeling of Dynamic Bending of a Circular Piezoelectric Plate

Accurate modelling of a coupled dynamic electro-mechanical response of circular piezoelectric plates under various loading conditions is of particular importance. Piezoelectric plates are not only basic structural elements, but with certain considerations can be conveniently fit for numerical simulation of piezoelectric sensors and transducers. In this work, a Laplace domain direct boundary element formulation is applied for dynamic analysis of three-dimensional linear piezoelectric moderately thick circular plates. Zero initial conditions, vanishing body forces and the absence of the free electrical charges are assumed. Weakly singular expressions of Laplace domain boundary integral equations for the generalized displacements are employed. Spatial discretization is based on the nodal collocation method. Mixed boundary elements are implemented. The geometry of the elements, generalized displacement and generalized tractions are represented with different shape functions: quadratic, linear and constant, accordingly. Integral expressions of the three-dimensional Laplace domain piezoelectric displacement fundamental solutions are used. After solving the problem on a set of Laplace transform parameter values, time-domain solutions are retrieved from the corresponding Laplace domain solutions by employing a numerical inversion routine. Numerical example is provided to show reliability and accuracy of the proposed boundary element formulation