Abstract
Using the fact that polyvinylidene fluoride polymer (PVDF) has the anisotropic property, the experimental and numerical investigations were performed to study the static behavior of lasted composite plate when the PVDF was used as a continuous actuator. In this way, it was confirmed that not only the directionality of the composite material, but also the directionality of the PVDF could influence the deformation of the structure. With combination of the different layer angles of both composite and PVDF, several deformed states of the structure, i.e., bending, pure torsion, bending-torsion coupling were obtained. Pure torsional motion was produced when orthotropic electromechanical coupling of PVDF is used. Stronger pure torsional motion was also observed through tailoring of composite layer angle [+451-45] without orthotropic electro-mechanical coupling. But the PVDF has advantage over the composite in producing the pure twist motion since it is very easy to tailor. An efficient finite element method based on first order shear deformation theory which treats both actuators and plate as plies of an integrated laminated plate was developed and various numerical verifications were performed. The computed results were also compared with the experimental results and agreed well. Finally, the effects of various layer angles of both continuous piezo actuator and CFRP composite plate were examined. As results, desired specific deformed shapes of the structure can be generated by selecting appropriate combination of layer angles of both materials, and these results can be used to maximize the directional characteristics of PVDF and composite materials.
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