Abstract

This article presents the use of isogeometric analysis (IGA) to analyse the behaviour of the functionally graded material (FGM) plate structures with piezoelectric patches. This study investigates the effect of piezoelectric patches on the plate structure made of FGM material as a solid model. Because IGA is based on the NURBS (Non-uniform rational basis spline) approximation, this method describes the exact geometry with the higher-order functions approach. The effectiveness of the present method is to use the few degrees of freedom combining a high-order approximation function between elements to ensure the accuracy of the result, which reduces the computational time and saves the required memory. In addition, NURBS geometry has also been shown to be a viable approach due to the flexibility in mesh construction such as refinement and high-order continuity that warranty correctly the results of the problem. Based on the advantages that IGA has been proved by many previous studies, we built a three-dimensional model for plate structure consisting of upper and lower layers with piezoelectric patches, middle layer with FGM material. The results are verified and compared to the commercial Comsol software to prove the effectiveness of the method for this problem.