In this investigation, distributed modal actuator forces of simply supported truncated conical shell embedded by a piezoelectric layer are studied. Piezoelectric layer is distributed on the conical shell surface as actuators. Three types of distributions are considered: longitudinal, circumferential, and diagonal distributions. First, electromechanical equations of the conical shell with embedded piezoelectric actuator layer are extracted. Then modal expansion method is used to define independent modal characteristics of the conical shell. For each kind of distribution, three case studies are considered and evaluated. Results showed that in the longitudinal and diagonal distributed actuator, membrane force in the longitudinal direction is the dominant force and in the circumferential distributed actuator, the membrane force in the circumferential direction is the dominant force. The effects of cone angle, piezoelectric thickness, and piezoelectric layer segmentation on modal forces of each distributed actuator are also studied. In circumferential distributed actuator, modal forces increase as the cone angle increases. This phenomenon in the longitudinal and diagonal distributed actuator is almost reversed. The piezoelectric layer segmentation effect on the modal forces distribution is also evaluated, and it showed that this phenomenon has a critical effect on the modal forces distribution.
