Optimized electric networks for vibration damping of piezoactuated beams

This paper studies the multimodal vibration damping of an elastic beam equipped with multiple piezoelectric actuators connected to an electric network. Two analytical models of the electromechanical coupled structure are considered: a homogenized one, accurate when a large number of actuators is employed, is used to derive simple design criteria for the electric network; and a discrete one, able to face real situations when few actuators are employed, is adopted to test the network performance, defined as the exponential time-decay rate of the free vibrations of the controlled structure. Some electric networks are presented and compared in simulation to networks previously proposed in the literature, in order to evaluate their performances in broadband vibration control. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.