Multi-Objective Optimization for Piezoelectric-Based Approaches With Applications Toward Bladed Disks

Abstract

Recent years have seen a wealth of research interest in piezoelectric-based applications for turbomachinery blades covering areas including vibration actuators and sensors in test environments, as well as vibration reduction approaches. The success of these applications relies on efficient exchange of vibration energy between the mechanical and electrical domains through inclusion of the piezoelectric elements on the vibrating structure. The effective electromechanical coupling coefficient measures the quality of this energy exchange for the various vibration modes of the structure; however, there is often trade-offs between the size of the piezoelectric elements and the electromechanical coupling for the various modes of interest. As such, this paper applies a multi-objective optimization algorithm that generates Pareto-optimal fronts to aid in the selection of the optimal location of off-the-shelf piezoelectric patches on the surface of each blade of an academic blisk. As the off-the-shelf patches have a fixed geometry, this paper simplifies the optimization to only include the electromechanical coupling of the modes of interest. Both a numerical and experimental application of this optimization procedure to an 8-sector blisk machined from a single sheet of aluminum shows the effectiveness of the approach.