A Study of Optimal Configuration of Piezoelectric Actuators Using Genetic Algorithms

To enhance the controllability of structures, a study on piezoelectric actuator segmentation and actuator patterns has been performed. Separate piezoelectric actuators can be considered as an equivalent single actuator when they are commanded by the same control voltage. After segmenting piezoelectric actuator into an arbitrary number of small pieces, actuator patterns have been effectively determined as a combination of these pieces using Genetic algorithms. It is observed that an actuator pattern fur controlling a particular mode is determined by the phase of modal control forces, Also optimal or neat optimal patterns to control several modes simultaneously by maximizing the centre liability index.