Degenerated shell element for geometrically nonlinear analysis of thin-walled piezoelectric active structures

Active piezoelectric thin-walled structures, especially those with a notably higher membrane than bending stiffness, are susceptible to large rotations and transverse deflections. Recent investigations conducted by a number of researchers have shown that the predicted behavior of piezoelectric structures can be significantly influenced by the assumption of large displacements and rotations of the structure, thus demanding a geometrically nonlinear formulation in order to investigate it. This paper offers a degenerated shell element and a simplified formulation that relies on small incremental steps for the geometrically nonlinear analysis of piezoelectric composite structures. A set of purely mechanical static cases is followed by a set of piezoelectric coupled static cases, both demonstrating the applicability of the proposed formulation.