Dynamic buckling of active sandwich panels

In this work, a laminated sandwich plate model with external piezoelectric layers is extended for buckling and dynamic stability analysis. In-plane harmonic uniformly distributed loads are considered in the dynamic stability problem, and the Mathieu-type equilibrium equations are solved using Bolotin’s method to obtain the regions of dynamic instability. The model is validated to begin with, using available results in the literature for static and dynamic buckling of laminated soft core sandwich panels. Ultimately, the model is used to simulate the behaviour of laminated composite and sandwich plates with piezoelectric patches, controlled using a closed loop law with proportional and derivative gains, for buckling and dynamic stability analysis. This control system is used to postpone buckling, increase fundamental frequencies and reshape the regions of dynamic instability. •Dynamic buckling of soft core sandwich plates with piezoelectric patches.•Finite element model developed for active soft core sandwich plates.•Proportional and derivative control used to reshape the dynamic instability regions.