Active suppression of aircraft panel vibration with piezoceramic strain actuators

The out-of-plane vibration of a panel on an aircraft tailplane, excited by random noise in the 100-500 Hz range, was suppressed by an active controller that used four piezoceramic patches, two as strain actuators and two as strain sensors, The strain energy levels at these sensor locations were significantly reduced. Three accelerometers at arbitrarily chosen locations elsewhere on the panel demonstrated that the out-of-plane vibrational energy levels were also reduced there. The multi-input, multi-output digital controller, designed by a physically meaningful technique, also resulted in a system with good robustness properties.