Postbuckling of Pressure-loaded Piezolaminated Cylindrical Shells With Temperature Dependent Properties

A postbuckling analysis is presented for a shear deformable laminated cylindrical shell with piezoelectric actuators subjected to lateral or hydrostatic pressure combined with electric and thermal loads. The material properties are assumed to be dependent on the temperature. The governing equations are based on higher-order shear deformation shell theory with a von Kármán-Donnell-type of kinematic nonlinearity. The nonlinear prebuckling deformations and initial geometric imperfections of the shell are both taken into account. A singular perturbation technique is employed to determine the buckling pressure and postbuckling equilibrium paths. The numerical illustrations concern the postbuckling behavior of pressure-loaded, perfect and imperfect, cross-ply laminated cylindrical shells with fully covered or embedded piezoelectric actuators under different sets of thermal and electric loading conditions. The results reveal that the temperature rise has a significant effect on the buckling pressure and postbuckling behavior of piezolaminated cylindrical shells when the temperature-dependent properties are taken into account, but it only has a very small effect under temperature-independent case. In contrast, the control voltage has a small effect on the buckling pressure and postbuckling behavior of piezolaminated cylindrical shells.