Vibration control units with piezoelectric patches and multi-resonant shunts set to maximize electric power absorption

This paper presents simulation results on the flexural vibration of a plate structure equipped with piezoelectric patches connected to multi-resonant shunts tuned to control the response in a target frequency band. The multi-resonant shunts are made by multiple resistor-inductor-capacitor (RLC) branches. The RLC components in each branch are tuned with a mapping procedure, which sets in turn each branch to maximise the electric power absorbed by the shunts with respect to the resonant response of a specific flexural mode of the structure. The study first shows preliminary tuning considerations for simple RL and RLC shunt configurations. It then proceeds to show the equivalence of performance indicators given by the maximisation of the time-averaged electric power absorption by the shunts and the minimisation of the time-averaged kinetic energy associated to the resonant response of target flexural modes of the plate. Finally it shows the global vibration control performance produced by the proposed multi-branch shunt.