Date of Award

Spring 1992

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

Program/Concentration

Engineering Mechanics

Committee Director

Thomas E. Alberts

Committee Member

Harley H. Cudney

Committee Member

Chuh Mei

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E57 C65

Abstract

The development of piezoelectric polymer films has generated a great deal of excitement in the structural controls community because they are lightweight, durable, distributed in nature and have broad band frequency characteristics. The flurry of research inspired by piezoelectric films has primarily been dedicated to using them as distributed sensors, and to a lesser extent, as distributed actuators.

Active damping of structural vibrations using piezoelectric polymer films as sensors and actuators has primarily been directed toward taking advantage of their distributed nature and employing various types of distributed control theory. This approach does not easily yield insight into the dynamics of the structures being controlled and has left many questions about the interaction between the structure and controller. In this research active damping using piezoelectric polymer films has been investigated from a classical point of view using Bode and root locus plots. This approach has yielded new insight into the dynamics of the systems under consideration and has allowed for the effects of compensation to be investigated and higher order controllers designed.

The differential equation of motion for a laminate cantilever beam has been derived using energy methods. The differential equation was then Laplace transformed, solved and put into two transfer function forms. Based on the knowledge gained from the transfer functions, various types of compensation have been investigated numerically with the intent of adding damping to the system. One of the analytical transfer functions was experimentally verified and a closed loop compensator employing integral feedback was implemented. The results of these experiments show close agreement with the analytical predictions and the controller successfully adds damping to the system under study.

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DOI

10.25777/yf5f-7s11

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