Piezoelectric transducer (PZT) patches can be attached to a structure in order to reduce vibration. The PZT patches essentially convert vibrational mechanical energy into electrical energy. The electrical energy can be dissipated via an electrical impedance. Currently, impedance designs require experimental tuning of resistance values by minimizing the H2 norm of the damped system. After the design process, shunt circuits are normally implemented using discrete reasonable performance has been an ongoing and unaddressed problem in shunt damping. A new approach to implementing piezoelectric shunt circuits is presented. A synthetic impedance, consisting of a voltage controlled circuit source and DSP system, is used to synthesize the terminal impedance of a shunt network. A two mode shunt circuit is designed and implemented for an experimental simply supported beam. The second and third structural modes of the beam are reduced in magnitude by 22 and 18 dB.

Date Published: 21 March 2001
PDF: 13 pages
Proc. SPIE 4235, Smart Structures and Devices, (21 March 2001);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4235:
Smart Structures and Devices
Dinesh K. Sood; Ronald Albert Lawes; Vasundara V. Varadan, Editor(s)