A proof-of-concept investigation on active vibration control of hybrid smart structures

This paper presents a proof-of-concept investigation on an active vibration control of two hybrid smart structures. One consists of a piezoelectric film (PF) actuator and an electrorheological fluid (ERF) actuator, and the other is featured by a piezoceramic (PZT) actuator and a shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator. Following the formulation of governing equations of lateral motion for these two smart structures, control schemes to actively suppress tip deflections under the forced vibration are designed. As for the PF/ERF hybrid smart structure, a neural network controller associated with a field-dependent frequency response is proposed, while a sliding mode controller is employed for the PZT/SMA hybrid smart structure. These control schemes are experimentally realized to demonstrate the effectiveness of the hybrid methodology in view of the suppression of tip deflections under the forced vibration. The experimental results exhibit superior abilities of the hybrid actuator systems to to tailor elastodynamic responses of the smart structures rather than a single class of actuator system. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.