Piezo-electromechanical smart materials with distributed arrays of piezoelectric transducers: Current and upcoming applications

This review paper intends to gather and organize a series of works which discuss the possibility of exploiting the mechanical properties of distributed arrays of piezoelectric transducers. The concept can be described as follows: on every structural member one can uniformly distribute an array of piezoelectric transducers whose electric terminals are to be connected to a suitably optimized electric waveguide. If the aim of such a modification is identified to be the suppression of mechanical vibrations then the optimal electric waveguide is identified to be the 'electric analog' of the considered structural member. The obtained electromechanical systems were called PEM (PiezoElectroMechanical) structures. The authors especially focus on the role played by Lagrange methods in the design of these analog circuits and in the study of PEM structures and we suggest some possible research developments in the conception of new devices, in their study and in their technological application. Other potential uses of PEMs, such as Structural Health Monitoring and Energy Harvesting, are described as well. PEM structures can be regarded as a particular kind of smart materials, i.e. materials especially designed and engineered to show a specific andwell-defined response to external excitations: for this reason, the authors try to find connection between PEM beams and plates and some micromorphic materials whose properties as carriers of waves have been studied recently. Finally, this paper aims to establish some links among some concepts which are used in different cultural groups, as smart structure, metamaterial and functional structural modifications, showing how appropriate would be to avoid the use of different names for similar concepts. © 2015 - IOS Press and the authors

Vibration control in plates by uniformly distributed PZT actuators interconnected via electric networks

In this paper a novel device aimed at controlling the mechanical vibrations of plates by means of a set of electrically-interconnected piezoelectric actuators is described. The actuators are embedded uniformly in the plate wherein they connect every node of an electric network to ground, thus playing the two-fold role of capacitive element in the electric network and of couple suppliers. A mathematical model is introduced to describe the propagation of electro-mechanical waves in the device; its validity is restricted to the case of wave-forms with wave-length greater than the dimension of the piezoelectric actuators used. A self-resonance criterion is established which assures the possibility of electro-mechanical energy exchange. Finally the problem of vibration control in simply supported and clamped plates is addressed; the optimal net-impedance is determined. The results indicate that the proposed device can improve the performances of piezoelectric actuationComment: 22 page

Synthesis of electrical networks interconnecting PZT actuators to damp mechanical vibrations

This paper proves that it is possible to damp mechanical vibrations of some beam frames by means of piezoelectric actuators interconnected via passive networks. We create a kind of electromechanical wave guide where the electrical velocity group equals the mechanical one thus enabling an electromechanical energy transfer. Numerical simulations are presented which prove the technical feasibility of proposed deviceComment: International Symposium on Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics in honor of Professor K.Miya, Tokyo: 2000. 9 page

Parallel computations and control of adaptive structures

The equations of motion for structures with adaptive elements for vibration control are presented for parallel computations to be used as a software package for real-time control of flexible space structures. A brief introduction of the state-of-the-art parallel computational capability is also presented. Time marching strategies are developed for an effective use of massive parallel mapping, partitioning, and the necessary arithmetic operations. An example is offered for the simulation of control-structure interaction on a parallel computer and the impact of the approach presented for applications in other disciplines than aerospace industry is assessed

Development of piezoelectric harvesters with integrated trimming devices

Piezoelectric cantilever harvesters have a large power output at their natural frequency, but in some applications the frequency of ambient vibrations is different fromthe harvester\u2019s frequency and/or ambient vibrations are periodicwith some harmonic components. To copewith these operating conditions harvesters with integrated trimming devices (ITDs) are proposed. Some prototypes are developed with the aid of an analytical model and tested with an impulsive method. Results show that a small trimming device can lower the main resonance frequency of a piezoelectric harvester of the same extent as a larger tip mass and, moreover, it generates at high frequency a second resonance peak. A multi-physics numerical finite element (FE) model is developed for predicting the generated power and for performing a stress-strain analysis of harvesters with ITDs. The numerical model is validated on the basis of the experimental results. Several configurations of ITDs are conceived and studied. Numerical results show that the harvesters with ITDs are able to generate relevant power at two frequencies, owing to the particular shape of the modes of vibration. The stress in the harvesters with ITDs is smaller than the stress in the harvester with a tip mass trimmed to the same frequency

Optimal boundary control of dynamics responses of piezo actuating micro-beams

AbstractOptimal control theory is formulated and applied to damp out the vibrations of micro-beams where the control action is implemented using piezoceramic actuators. The use of piezoceramic actuators such as PZT in vibration control is preferable because of their large bandwidth, their mechanical simplicity and their mechanical power to produce controlling forces. The objective function is specified as a weighted quadratic functional of the dynamic responses of the micro-beam which is to be minimized at a specified terminal time using continuous piezoelectric actuators. The expenditure of the control forces is included in the objective function as a penalty term. The optimal control law for the micro-beam is derived using a maximum principle developed by Sloss et al. [J.M. Sloss, J.C. Bruch Jr., I.S. Sadek, S. Adali, Maximum principle for optimal boundary control of vibrating structures with applications to beams, Dynamics and Control: An International Journal 8 (1998) 355–375; J.M. Sloss, I.S. Sadek, J.C. Bruch Jr., S. Adali, Optimal control of structural dynamic systems in one space dimension using a maximum principle, Journal of Vibration and Control 11 (2005) 245–261] for one-dimensional structures where the control functions appear in the boundary conditions in the form of moments. The derived maximum principle involves a Hamiltonian expressed in terms of an adjoint variable as well as admissible control functions. The state and adjoint variables are linked by terminal conditions leading to a boundary-initial-terminal value problem. The explicit solution of the problem is developed for the micro-beam using eigenfunction expansions of the state and adjoint variables. The numerical results are given to assess the effectiveness and the capabilities of piezo actuation by means of moments to damp out the vibration of the micro-beam with a minimum level of voltage applied on the piezo actuators

Stabilization of large space structures by linear reluctance actuators

Application of magnetic forces are considered for stabilization of vibrations of flexible space structures. Three electromagnetic phenomena are studied, such as: (1) magnetic body force; (2) reluctance torque; and (3) magnetostriction, and their application is analyzed for stabilization of a beam. The magnetic body force actuator uses the force that exists between poles of magnets. The reluctance actuator is configured in such a way that the reluctance of the magnetic circuit will be minimum when the beam is straight. Any bending of the beam increases the reluctance and hence generates a restoring torque that reduces bending. The gain of the actuator is controlled by varying the magnetizing current. Since the energy density of a magnetic device is much higher compared to piezoelectric or thermal actuators, it is expected that the reluctance actuator will be more effective in controlling the structural vibrations

Power Control Optimization of an Underwater Piezoelectric Energy Harvester

Over the past few years, it has been established that vibration energy harvesters with intentionally designed components can be used for frequency bandwidth enhancement under excitation for sufficiently high vibration amplitudes. Pipelines are often necessary means of transporting important resources such as water, gas, and oil. A self-powered wireless sensor network could be a sustainable alternative for in-pipe monitoring applications. A new control algorithm has been developed and implemented into an underwater energy harvester. Firstly, a computational study of a piezoelectric energy harvester for underwater applications has been studied for using the kinetic energy of water flow at four different Reynolds numbers Re = 3000, 6000, 9000, and 12,000. The device consists of a piezoelectric beam assembled to an oscillating cylinder inside the water of pipes from 2 to 5 inches in diameter. Therefore, unsteady simulations have been performed to study the dynamic forces under different water speeds. Secondly, a new control law strategy based on the computational results has been developed to extract as much energy as possible from the energy harvester. The results show that the harvester can efficiently extract the power from the kinetic energy of the fluid. The maximum power output is 996.25 mu W and corresponds to the case with Re = 12,000.The funding from the Government of the Basque Country and the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU through the SAIOTEK (S-PE11UN112) and EHU12/26 research programs, respectively, is gratefully acknowledged. The authors are very grateful to SGIker of UPV/EHU and European funding (ERDF and ESF) for providing technical and human

Performance of piezoelectric shunts for vibration reduction

This work addresses passive reduction of structural vibration by means of shunted piezoelectric patches. The two classical resistive and resonant shunt solutions are considered. The main goal of this paper is to give closed-form solutions to systematically estimate the damping performances of the shunts, in the two cases of free and forced vibrations, whatever the elastic host structure is. Then it is carefully demonstrated that the performance of the shunt, in terms of vibration reduction, depends on only one free parameter: the so-called modal electromechanical coupling factor (MEMCF) of the mechanical vibration mode to which the shunts are tuned. Experiments are proposed and an excellent agreement with the model is obtained, thus validating it

Sizing optimization of piezoelectric smart structures with meta-modeling techniques for dynamic applications

This article shows an efficient method with a high industrial applicability to design piezoelectric smart structures for dynamic applications. This method allows sizing structures with requirements of dynamic displacements. The first step of this method consists in extracting dynamic reduced models from Finite Element simulations which will enable us to obtain a model for any structure, whatever its complexity, as opposed to analytical modeling methods. These models are computed for a set of design parameters. Then a meta-model, which is a simplified descriptive model of other models, is computed as a surface response model that expresses the design objectives and constraints as a function of the design variables. The combination of the results stemming from the meta-model allows working out the optimal values of the design parameters. The main advantage of the proposed method is to enable the quick design exploration of structures. As an example, the method is applied to a flexible structure whose dynamic displacements need to be controlled in bending and twisting. The theoretical results are validated in the end by experiments