1

Abstract As an important part of the smart/

intelligent structures, the composite plate with
piezoelectric-ceramics (PZT) patches embedded has
numerous values in many engineering applications,
such as: aerospace, automotive, civil and mechanical
engineering. A composite thin plate excited by PZT
actuators is considered in this work. To describe the
dynamic response of the quadrate plate clamped at its
boundaries, commercial package FEMLAB3.1 is used
to build and simulate a mathematical model. The
model is a set of nonlinear partial differential
equations (PDEs) with spatial discontinuous
coefficients, which is developed on the basis of the
KirchhoffLove plate theory, Von-Karman nonlinear
strain-displacement relationship, and the macroscopic
and quasi-static piezoelectric polarization. The result
comparisons between the numerical simulation of
FEMLAB model and one existing tested model is
carried out. The comparisons demonstrate that the
model made by FEMLAB3.1 is right and can flexibly
be used in the dynamic simulation of such MEMS
structure, the composite plate with PZT patches
embedded.
Keywords FEMLAB 3.1 - composite plates -
PZTs patches

1 A Special Smart Structure: Composite Plate
with PZTs Patches

In Newnham [1], the smart structural systems are
denoted as the structures with embedded sensors and
actuators which are able to sense and take corrective
action. In the last few years, many physicists,
mathematicians, and engineers from aerospace, civil,
electrical, materials and mechanical engineering
fields are all involved in some part of the
development of the smart structural systems. The
reason for this activity is that it may be possible for us
to create certain kinds of structures and systems with
the capability of adapting to or correcting for varying
operating conditions. These classes of systems have
immense technological implications: medical
applications, remote operations, self-monitoring
structures, vibration isolation and control, and so on.
In the 21st century, we are entering into the
research and development of the next generation of
smart structural systems. The next generation of smart
structural systems feature functionality, intelligence,
and miniaturization (down to NANO length scales),
and the coupling among magneto-thermo-electro-
mechanical fields. Among the new generation of
smart structures, the composite plate with
piezoelectric-ceramics (PZT) patches embedded has
attracted great efforts of scientists and researchers
because of its special characteristics of combining the
capability to provide large recovery forces and
displacements of the composite plate with the electro-
mechanical coupling property of the PZT materials
together.
This kind of new generation smart structure
systems featuring a network of integrated
piezoelectric materials sensors and actuators within a
host composite plate will be very useful in the
engineering applications, including the shape
controlling of spaceship antennas, aircraft wings, and
submarine sterns, or the vibrations suppresion of these
structures. For example, vibration amplitudes in the
plate structure may be suppressed by using the
sensing and actuation capabilities of PZT patches
embedded in the composite plate. Given the external
applied loads, the composite plate will deform.
Meanwhile, the PZT patches (sensors) deform and
because of its constitutive behavior, a surface charge
is developed proportional to the applied loads. The
charge may be processed by a closed loop control
system, which supplies an appropriate voltage input to
the PZT patches (actuators) that induces a
counteractive deformation to the plate structure.
Therefore, the amplitudes of vibrations are
suppressed.
Because of its great value, the studies of the
dynamic analysis of such system are necessary and
intensive. In these studies, many simplifications have





Jiyuan Wang
Modeling Dynamic of Composite Plate with PZT Patches
Embedded by using FEMLAB3.1

J. Wang
Mads Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark
Tel: +45 7413 4131
Mob: +45 4053 6806
E-mail: windyanjuly@hotmail.com
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm

2
been made while maintaining an effective analysis.
The developed mathematical models tend to aim for
higher precision and closer approximation of real
structures, which enables us to analyze the dynamical
behavior of the considered systems more exactly. A
tested model for the composite plate with arbitrary
number of PZT patches embedded is well established
in [2], on the basis of Kirchhoff-Love plate
assumption and Von-Karman nonlinear strain
displacement relations, while an ideal linear behavior
is assumed for the piezoelectric actuation.
Considering the structure in Figure-1, the host
plate occupies a quadrate domain S and the 36
quadrate piezoelectric patches are evenly fixed inside
the plate by 6 rows times 6 columns.

Figure 1: Structure of the composite plate with PZT actuators.

where, the domain occupied by actuators (patches
activated by electric input) is defined S S
PI
. The
domain occupied by patches without electric input is
defined
S S
PN

. The complement is denoted
as
P B
S S S / := . The actuators can be flexibly chosen
according to the simulation requirements. As shown
in the figure, the central four PZT patches are
selected to be the actuators. A set of nonlinear Partial
Differential Equations (PDEs) can be used to describe
this model as given below:

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( )

+ =

+ +
,
(1) ,
.
) ( 22 21
) ( 12 11
) ( ) ( ) (
22 21 12 11
P
P
P P P
S t tt
S t tt
S y t S x t S t
y x y x tt tt
I V
y
G
y x
v
I V
x
G
y x
u
I e V
y
G I e V
x
G I V F
e e
y
e e
x
e e div e





where, e(x, y) is the transverse displacement in z-
direction, u(x, y) and v(x, y) are the displacements on
the x- and y-directions respectively. The stresses
tensors
ij
and the strain tensors
ij
relative to the
displacements e(x, y), u(x, y) and v(x, y) are defined:

( )
( )
,
1
,
1
,
1
12 21 12
11 22
2
22
22 11
2
11

+
= =
+

=
+

=
Y
Y
Y

( ),
2
1
,
2
1
,
2
1
21 12
2
22
2
11
y x x y
y y
x x
e e v u
e v
e u
+ + = =
+ =
+ =

(2)

where, Y is the Young elastic modulus, is the
Poison ratio, and is the density which are materials-
specific coefficients. , F, and G are constants
depending on the material characteristics. The values
of these simulation parameters are given in Table-1.

P
Y =2
P
=0.4
P
=2
P
=5 F=5
B
Y =1
B
=0.2
B
=1
B
=3 G=5

Table 1: The normalized parameters for FEMLAB simulation.

Figure 2: Material specification
P
S
I is the indicator function of
P
S as shown in
Figure-2.
( )
( )

=
S y x, , 0
S y x, , 1
B
p
P
S
I
(3)

V(t) is the input function representing the
distributed electrical loading on the PZT actuators:
)) ( 5 cos( ) 5 sin( ) ( y x t t V + =
(4)

This is a set of PDEs formulations with
discontinuous coefficients in spatial domain and
additional nonlinear terms related to piezoelectric
properties of actuators. It can be numerically solved
by Finite Element Method (FEM) given the initial
condition (5) and the boundary conditions (6) as
following:
, 0 | , 0 |
, 0 | , 0 |
, 0 | , 0 |
0 0
0 0
0 0
=

=
=

=
=

=
= =
= =
= =
t t
t t
t t
t
v
v
t
u
u
t
e
e
(5)
. 0 | , 0 | , 0 | , 0 | = = =

=

v u
n
e
e
r
(6)
Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm

3
2 Implementations in FEMLAB 3.1

Given the nonlinear PDEs of the mathematical
model, one now can consider how it is implemented
in FEMLAB 3.1. The chosen application mode to
solve the problem is the General Form of PDE
Modes. The time-dependent analysis is used to be the
solver because our aim is to study the dynamical
response of the structure. Meanwhile, the space
dimension is set up to be a 2D domain due to the
assumption of the composite plate is a thin plate,
which means the thickness of the plate is neglectable
compared with the deflection in z-direction. There are
seven dependent variables e, e1, e2, u, u1, v, v1,
corresponding to the displacements and their relative
derivatives with respect to time and
space . v and v, , u u, e, , e e,
t t t,
The relationships
among them read:

=
=

, 2
, 1
e e
e
t
e

, 1
, 1
v
t
v
u
t
u
(7)
In order to build a model in FEMLAB, by using
these variables, a PDEs system suitable to FEMLAB
modeling can be obtained from the original PDEs
system. It reads as follow:

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( )

+ =

+ +

, 1
(8) , 1
.
2 1 1
) ( 22 21
) ( 12 11
) ( ) ( ) (
22 21 12 11
P
P
P P P
S t
S t
S y t S x t S t
y x y x t
I V
y
G
y x
v
t
I V
x
G
y x
u
t
I e V
y
G I e V
x
G I V F
e e
y
e e
x
e e div e
t





According to eqn (7) and (8), the mass
coefficients
a
d , the flux vectors , and the source
terms F can be set up in the subdomain setting. Note
that the assignment of the indication function and the
material-specific parameters should be evaluated for



The numerical solutions at t=0.7s of the existing model in [2].

the specified material. The variables initial values are
all equal to zero due to the assumption that the plate
has no initial displacements in each direction.
According to the boundary conditions eqn (6), the
Dirichlet boundary condition is chosen at all
boundaries in the boundary setting. All interior
boundaries are not activated.
In the options setting, the assignments of the
parameters in the Table-1 are denoted in the constants
definition and the input function V(t) is named in the
scalar expressions definition, respectively .
Because the deflection or the displacement in z-
direction of the plate is what we are concerning, the
deflection e is the only output variable in the surface
plot and the animate. A triangular mesh is used by
UMFPACK direct solver to mesh the 2D geometries.
When the mesh is automatically refined twice, a
satisfactory spatial resolution is obtained and it was
found to be independent with the further refinement of
the grid size. The relative tolerance for the error
criteria is 1103. The details are listed in the Table-
2.

Solution Form General
Linear system solver Direct (UMFPACK)
Time stepping 0:0.1:1.4
Relative tolerance 0.001

Table 2: The solver parameters and the plot parameters setting.



3 Numerical Results Comparisons

To demonstrate the rightness of the model built by
means of FEMLAB 3.1, the results comparisons are
made between the numerical results of the reference
[2] and the FEMLAB model in terms of the same
simulation paremeters. In the Figure-4, the figures
show the solutions at time indicated. The solutions of
FEMLAB model are listed in the right side, which of
the tested model are presented in the left side. By
close observation, it can easily be seen that the results
are very close with relatively small error.
The numerical solutions at t=0.7s of the FEMLAB model.

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm

4


The numerical solutions at t=1.4 s of the existing model in [2].

The numerical solutions at t=0.7s of the FEMLAB model.

Figure 3: Results comparisons at different time instance.

4 Conclusions and Future Expectations

By comparing the numerical simulation results,
the right development of this FEMLAB model is
demonstrated and this enables us to study the
dynamical behavior on the condition of different
electric loading. This model is also useful for the
design of the considered structure, such as, the
structural parameters optimization.
Based on the model built by FEMLAB, the further
study to such system is focusing on developing a
lower-order dimension model. The lower order model
should be a set of ODEs which can easily be utilized
in the practical industrial control application than the
present PDEs model. Encouraging results have been
obtained.
Further work will focus on the sensibility research
of the considered system by using the piezoelectric
effect of the PZT patches. The PZT patches are
working as sensors to convert the deformation or
deflection of the plate into electric singal. More over,
by combining research of the actuation and sensibility
property of such smart structure, the vibration
suppression or shapes control will not be far from
now.

Acknowledgements The authors thank MCI for supporting
this project. The authors are also grateful to Dr. Linxiang
Wang for his important supervision.

References

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3. FEMLAB Version3.1, COMSOL AB, www.comsol.com.
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4. Wang B T and Rogers C A.: Laminated plate theory for
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Chichester, 1996.
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Excerpt from the Proceedings of the COMSOL Multiphysics User's Conference 2005 Stockholm