Modeling of smart composites controlled by thin piezoelectric fibers

Recently, thin piezoelectric fibers with diameters between 10 micrometer and 30 micrometer have been manufactured and used as sensor/actuator components of smart composite structures. The paper deals with the mathematical analysis, numerical simulation and optimal design of smart structures controlled by such thin piezoelectric fibers, where two different approaches are investigated. At first a smeared concept is applied. Each active layer consisting of piezoelectric fibers embedded in a matrix material is modeled as an anisotropic coupled electro-mechanical continuum and analyzed by recently developed special finite shell elements. At second a discrete concept is used, where the piezoelectric fibers are modeled as one-dimensional truss like finite elements which are embedded into conventional finite elements by a penalty technique. These two approaches are discussed and compared.