An investigation over the effect of piezoelectricity and porosity distribution on natural frequencies of porous smart plates

The eigenvibration characteristics of a smart plate with piezoelectric layers and porous-cellular core are investigated in the present article. The core plate is assumed to be composed of materials that contain pores and the porosities may be distributed according to different mathematical rules. Variational principle is applied in order to derive the continuous system equations on the basis of Mindlin plate theory. A highly efficient analytical modeling for eigenfrequency analysis of the smart plate is presented under the assumption that both Skempton's pore pressure coefficient and normal elongation through the thickness are negligible. Unlike numerical methods that require huge computational cost, this approach enables us to find the system's response for rectangular plates with arbitrary dimensions. To examine the validity of the present framework, multiple comparison studies are made between the extracted results and those available in the literature. It is shown that the type of porosity distribution influences strongly on the way that frequency changes. Furthermore, it is found out that it is necessary to consider electrical effects for plates with open circuit condition unlike the other electrical condition.