Spatial Modal Excitation Using Point Actuators.

This paper considers the modal excitation of a planar structure using point actuators designed for exciting a particular modal amplitude of the structure. It is the purpose of this paper to establish the design procedure of a modal excitation methodology based upon point actuators. Much as a distributed modal actuator outstrips a point actuator in modal excitation, a distributed actuator with sufficient power is non existent. To cope with this problem, this paper presents a design methodology of modal excitation using point actuators that are easy to obtain and handle. It is found that modal excitation using point actuators can be achieved by simply following the design procedure of distributed modal sensors already presented by the authors. It is also found that point actuators can perfectly replace the distributed actuators for modal excitation in the frequency range of interest. Experiment is conducted, demonstrating the validity of the point actuator-based modal excitation.