Distributed sensor/actuator design for plates: Spatial shape and shading as design parameters

This paper will discuss two-dimensional distributed transducer shape and shading and their implications for the active control of plates. Two-dimensional transducer shaping is shown to be a useful design tool for the control problem. In addition, transducer shaping can be combined with gain-weighting to provide close approximation of continuously shaded transducer distributions. An optimization method is described which can be used to fit the approximation to a continuous distribution. The analysis is applied to two examples of transducers used to control a rectangular, simply-supported plate. The first relies on shaping alone and is shown to spatially filter out the even-even modes. The second was developed using the optimization technique and is shown to provide ''all-mode'' controllability and observability. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.