Governing equations for a piezoelectric plate with graded properties across the thickness

Two-dimensional first-order governing equations for electroded piezoelectric crystal plates with general symmetry and thickness-graded material properties are deduced from the three-dimensional equations of linear piezoelectricity by Mindlin´s general procedure of series expansion. Mechanical displacements and thickness-graded material properties, i.e., the elastic stiffnesses, piezoelectric coefficients, dielectric permittivities, and mass density, are expanded in powers of the thickness coordinate, while electric potential is expanded in a special series in order to accommodate the specified electric potentials at electroded faces of the plate. The effects of graded material properties on the piezoelectrically induced stresses or deformations by the applied surface potentials are clearly exhibited in these newly derived equations which reduce to Mindlin´s first-order equations of elastic anisotropic plates when the material properties are homogeneous. Closed form solutions are obtained from the three-dimensional equations of piezoelectricity and from the present two-dimensional equations for both homogeneous plates and bimorphs of piezoelectric ceramics. Dispersion curves for homogeneous plates and bimorphs and resonance frequencies for bimorph strips with finite width are computed from the solutions of three-dimensional and two-dimensional equations. Comparison of the results shows that predictions from the two-dimensional equations are very close to those from the three-dimensional equations.