Piezoelectric Structural Vibration Control Using Active Resonator Absorber

A novel dynamic vibration absorber is presented while exploring its practical implementation using piezoelectric ceramic (PZT) inertial actuators. It is referred to as active resonator absorber (ARA). The ARA is a passive absorber with an additional dynamic feedback compensator within the PZT actuator. Without any controller, the PZT inertial actuator becomes a passive vibration absorber due to the internal damping and stiffness properties of piezoelectric materials. Hence, it is inherently fail-safe. For active operation, the compensator parameters are designed such that a resonance condition is intentionally created within the absorber to mimic the vibratory energy from the system of concern to which it is attached. The resonance condition can be created through the appropriate design of the compensator and implemented through adjusting the external electrical voltage applied to the absorber. Because the parameters of the PZT actuators (i.e. stiffness, damping, and effective mass) are estimates, compensator designs based on these parameters would result in partial vibration suppression, when utilized in real applications. An auto-tuning method is, therefore, introduced to effectively tune the compensator parameters to improve vibration suppression quality. The effectiveness and stability of the proposed absorber is demonstrated through simulations when appended on a SDOF primary system.