The buckling stability finite element analysis of thermal piezoelectric truss structures

Structures consist of trusses and shells have been widely used in aeronautics industry for their superior properties, such as high stiffness-weight ratio, conveniently designable, etc. Generally, in such structures, trusses are used as support bases and usually made of thermal and piezoelectric materials. In the past few decades, much important progress in modeling and simulations has been achieved to understand how to control the distribution of structural components (e.g., trusses) and materials to gain good performance, however, it is still far from completeness. In this paper, considering the Thermal-Mechanical-Electrical coupling effect, the thermal piezoelectric finite element equation of the static and buckling analysis was derived for truss structure from the basic equilibrium equation. Numerical results showed that the multi-field coupling effect has a significant influence on the buckling stability of the thermal piezoelectric truss structure. Utilizing the coupling effect rationally can improve the structure buckling stability effectively. Thus, mechanical analysis towards to the thermal piezoelectric truss structure offers a theoretical foundation to the optimization and control of the whole structure.