Abstract
Two active/passive vibration dampers were designed to control a cantilever beam first mode of vibration. The active element was a piezoelectric polymer, polyvinlidene fluoride (PVDF). The passive damping was provided by the application of a viscoelastic layer on the surface of the steel beam. Two substantially different damper configurations were designed and tested. One damper consisted of a piezoelectric actuator bonded to one face of the beam, with a viscoelastic layer applied to the other surface of the beam. The second one was composed of a layer viscoeastic layer with one surface bonded to the beam, and with other being constrained by nine piezoelectric actuators connected in parallel. A control law based on the sign of the angular velocity of the cantilever beam was implemented to control the beam first mode of vibration. The piezoelectric sensor output was digitally differentiated to obtain the transverse linear velocity, and its sign was used in the control algorith. Two dampers provided the system a damping increase of a factor of four for the first damper and three for the second damper. Both dampers were found to work well at low levels of vibration, suggesting that they can be used effectively to prevent resonant vibrations in flexible structure from initiating and building up.