Active vibration control of a smart sandwich plate

In aerospace engineering, sandwich construction is preferred not only for its great decrease in weight but also for its advantage of smooth surfaces and perfect fatigue resistance. however, lots of vibration problems occur in these light weight structures. In this study, the first three vibration modes of a smart sandwich plate are aimed to be suppressed by using active vibration control techniques comprising a pole placement controller. Smart sandwich plate is composed of a passive sandwich composite plate and piezoelectric patches (PZT, Lead-Zirconate-Titanate) attached with epoxy adhesive at specific locations determined by using finite element modelling and analysis. Those PZT patches on the smart sandwich plate are then used both as actuators and sensors. After the system is identified in detail, various active vibration controllers are designed in MATLAB Simulink environment. The three different designed controllers are then observed to suppress the vibrations in each of the aimed mode successfully by working. As a result, in this research study, it is shown that the piezoelectric patch groups located regarding the maximum curvature of the vibrational modes of a sandwich plate structure can be used with designed controllers to suppress the intended modes actively in an efficient manner.