Integrating Active-Passive Hybrid Piezoelectric Networks With Active Constrained Layer Treatments for Structural Damping

The goals of the research reported in this paper are to investigate the feasibility of integrating Active-Passive Hybrid Piezoelectric Networks (APPN) with the Active Coristrained Layer (ACL) or Enhanced Active Constrained Layer (EACL) treatments, identify the benefits or limitations of the approach, and provide insights toward designing such systems. It is shown that integration of APPN with ACL cannot obtain much extra damping because of low inverse transmissibility, while the APPN-EACL configuration can achieve high damping around the shunt frequency. The APPN-EACL can be synthesized to outperform the APPN, EACL and APPN-ACL configurations under both narrowband and broadband excitations. The study indicates that while EACL can outperform ACL when the demand on performance is high, it will become less effective than ACL when control effort is very limited. However, with the help of the shunt circuit, APPN-EACL can outperform the APPN-ACL system even when the limitation on control effort is high.