J.N. Reddy
Distinguished Professor, Advanced Computational Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

Modeling of FGM and Smart Plate Structures and a New Computational Methodology

In the first part of the lecture, recent research by the author and his co-workers in the analysis of functionally graded plates subjected to thermomechanical loads and laminated composite plates with actuating layers for deflection control is discussed. In both cases the third-order plate theory of Reddy is used to model the kinematics of deformation, and geometric nonlinearilty in the von Kármán sense is included. In the case of functionally graded material plates (metal-ceramic), a two constituent material distribution based on power-law is used. Static as well as transient response of rectangular plates under different boundary conditions and thermo-mechanical loads is investigated. In the case of laminated plates with smart material layers, magnetostrictive material (Terfenol-D) layers are used to actively control the bending response via a simple negative- velocity-feedback control.

In the second part of the lecture, a new computational technology based on the least-squares formulations of plate bending and fluid flow problems is discussed. The least-squares finite element models are developed using mixed formulation of the governing equations. Numerical results will be presented to show the accuracy of these models over the conventional models.

Acknowledgements
The research reported in this lecture was carried out under the sponsorship of the ARO Grant No. DAAD 19-01-1-0483, P00002 (smart structures) and AFOSR Grant No. F49620-03-1-0201 (new computational technology). The support is gratefully acknowledged.