Suppression method of overshoot on non/less-energy shape-retainment control utilizing hysteretic behavior of piezoelectric actuators

To keep a shape of a smart structure with piezoelectric actuators bonded on it, electric voltage must be applied continuously. To reduce the amount of electricity usage, a new control method was proposed and its feasibility was examined in the previous studies [Proc. of SPIE 8689 86890C, Proc. of 29th ISTS 2013-c-40]. In this method hysteretic behavior of piezoelectric actuators in strain-electric field relationship was utilized effectively, which behavior is that some amount of strain remains even at zero voltage once a large voltage is applied. The results showed that displacement of a smart beam with a piezoelectric ceramic actuator bonded remained without applying voltage to the actuators after applying a pulsed voltage. However, the displacement overshot a final position while applying the pulsed voltage. That is generally undesirable. In this paper a suppression method of this overshoot was proposed. To this end another piezoelectric actuator was bonded on the beam opposing the original actuator. The original actuator was a soft type while a hard type piezoelectric actuator was used as the opposing actuator. With help from the two types of actuators, the overshoot could be suppressed while applying the pulsed voltage by controlling the voltage for the opposing actuator adequately, and a desired displacement could be obtained at zero voltage after the pulse.