Bending behavior of 2-2 multi-layered piezoelectric curved actuators

The objective of this paper is to study the bending behavior of 2-2 multi-layered piezoelectric curved actuators. Unlike the traditional investigations based on the elementary theory of elasticity, the governing equations of a curved actuator are solved based on the general theory of elasticity and piezoelectricity. The Airy stress function method is utilized and both the piezoelectric coefficient and the thickness for different layers are taken as variables in the analysis, which makes it easy to consider the effect of elastic layers or electrodes on the bending behavior of the actuators. By introducing several recurrence formulae, the exact solutions are obtained. Furthermore, good agreement is shown by comparing the theoretical results with numerical ones.