A method for establishing hybrid piezoelectric composite plate theories with continuous interlaminar stresses

In the present paper, a regular method is proposed to establish approximate piezoelectric composite plate theories with continuous interlaminar stresses, As an application of the treatment, a hybrid piezoelectric composite plate model with eight unknown displacement and electric potential parameters is developed. The theory satisfies the continuity conditions of transverse shear stresses at layer interfaces and is adequate for both global and ply level analysis. Furthermore, for a composite plate with any number of piezoelectric and fiber-reinforced layers, the number of unknown displacement and electric potential parameters in the governing equations is fixed for a specific approximate model. The methodology suggested in the paper can be used to construct approximate piezoelectric composite plate theories with various degrees of accuracy and unknown parameters.