Self-optimising piezoelectric damping

摘要

Traditional solutions to vibration problems often employ viscoelastic materials which can be heavy, temperature-sensitive and bulky. Active solutions can provide useful damping but are often complex and expensive. This paper outlines a passive piezoelectric damping system with an adaptive controller capable of not only providing useful damping levels, but of modifying the components so as to change the circuit resonant frequency and thereby the damping effort. Experiments on simple beams and more realistic structures are described and the potential benefits and power requirements of such a system discussed. Increases in loss factor up to a factor of 10 and a high level of tuning repeatability were seen.