Real-Time Active Control of Vibrations in a Flexible Beam Using Piezoelectric Transducers

Abstract This paper discusses the selection process for piezoelectric transducers (PZT) used as actuator elements for suppressing vibrations in a flexible beam system. A model for a clamped-free cantilevered beam is developed. The effects of changing physical parameters such as thickness of the piezoelectric ceramic, the optimum location of the PZT actuator, and the length of the PZT are studied based on the singular value decomposition of the controllability Grammian of the resulting system. A real-time experiment using the beam system with an active damping controller is implemented under the QNX real-time operating system. Simulation and experimental results show that applying a conventional controller to the system results in considerable vibration attenuation of the dominant modes.

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