Finite volume analysis of adaptive beams with piezoelectric sensors and actuators

This paper presents a finite volume (FV) formulation for the free vibration analysis and active vibration control of the smart beams with piezoelectric sensors and actuators. The governing equations based on Timoshenko beam theory are discretized using the finite volume method. For the purpose of forced vibration control of beam structures, the negative velocity feedback controller is designed for the single-input, single-output system. To achieve the best effect, the piezoelectric sensors and actuators are coupled with the host structure in different positions and then the performance of the designed control system is evaluated for each position. In the test examples, first the shear locking free feature of the present formulation is demonstrated. This has been performed by doing static and natural frequency analysis of some reference models. Then, the capability of the proposed method for the prediction of uncontrolled forced vibration response and active vibration control of a beam structure is studied.     

压电超材料梁中弹性波带隙特性与界面传输的主动控制

该文采用周期压电负电容电路,研究了弹性波超材料梁中带隙特性的主动控制问题.该系统利用外部电路改变所连接压电材料的材料参数,从而改变结构的等效参数,实现对带隙特性的调控.通过对单胞进行控制,可观察到主动控制系统作用时带隙的产生与消失.构造了含有交界面的弹性波超材料梁结构,分析了主动控制系统对波动界面传输特性的影响.     

Thermal self-action effects of acoustic beam in a vibrationally relaxing gas

Thermal self-action of acoustic beam in a molecular gas with excited internal degrees of molecules’ freedom, is studied. This kind of thermal self-action differs from that in a Newtonian fluid. Heating or cooling of a medium takes place due to transfer of internal vibrational energy. Equilibrium and non-equilibrium gases, which may be acoustically active, are considered. A beam in an acoustically active gas is self-focusing unlike a beam in a standard viscous gas. The self-action effects relating to wave beams containing shock fronts, are discussed. Stationary and non-stationary kinds of self-action are considered.     

Application of nonlocal continuum theory to the primary resonance analysis of an axially loaded nano beam under time delay control

The paper is concerned with the nonlinear primary resonance of nano beams with axial load under the velocity time delay control. In order to have a deep insight into the system, the amplitude frequency response curve of the system is firstly obtained using the multiple scales method. The effects of the control gains and time delays on the system stability are then investigated. The analyses illustrated that both delay feedback gain coefficient and velocity time delay control can mitigate the system vibrations properties (e.g. hardening nonlinearity, resonance amplitude and the corresponding width) to an excellent level. The nonlinear primary resonance of nano beam is also discussed with the influences of small scale effect, axial initial load, wave number, Winkler foundation modulus and the ratio of the length to the diameter. This paper establishes the relationship between the time delay controller and vibration properties of a nano beam system which provides the guidance for applying time delayed active control for different types of nano devices in engineering practices.     

Proposing a Pretwisted Bimorph Actuator

Though only small strains are available in piezoceramic materials, bending actuators provide reasonable deflections. Due to beam kinematics bending actuators usually are slender beams having flat cross-sections. This feature allows for maximum deflection in one direction. However, the axis orthogonal to it usually is not actuated. Instead of combining two straight bending actuators to overcome this problem we propose a bending actuator which is pretwisted. Controlling the pretwisted actuator segment-wise provides bending in several independent directions as well. Investigated is a pretwisted bimorph, similar to a helicoid. The active elements along the beam axis are subdivided and controlled separately, hence allowing independent control of the curvature of each section. Herein we give a first characterization of the pretwisted bimorph actuator. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

线性主动结构及模态(Ⅱ)——离散系统及梁

在“线性主动结构及模态(Ⅰ)”中给出了主动结构的基本概念及模态的若干属性的基础上,对主动离散系统及主动梁的属性做了进一步的讨论,包括稳定性和正交性,并用具体实例对模态做了解释．将伴随结构概念在梁结构中推广,具体讨论了两种配置的主动梁,它们分别代表离散传感和作动及分布传感和作动的配置,并给出了用主动梁振型和伴随主动梁振型表示的正交性条件．用实例给出了同位和非同位主动刚度梁的特征值随反馈大小的变化．     

Piezoelectric control of flexible vibrations in rotating beams: An experimental study

Active control of flexible vibrations by distributed piezoelectric actuators and sensors plays an increasing role in engineering, especially in light-weight structures. Exemplarily, in this contribution a rotating beam is studied which can be found in many practical applications, e.g. as robot arms or flexible manipulators in production processes. It has been intensively shown in the literature that it is possible to completely suppress the flexible vibrations by an appropriate distribution of piezoelectric actuation strains. In order to compensate the inertial forces in the considered rotating beam, a complex distribution is obtained, such that a practical realisation would be very extensive. To overcome the problem, a discrete approximation by piezoelectric patches is applied. In order to find an optimal configuration for an experimental setup, and to investigate several control strategies, a numerical simulation model has been implemented based on Bernoulli-Euler beam theory. The numerical results are verified by an experimental set-up, in which 48 piezoelectric patches have been attached on a beam with rectangular hollow cross-section. Each patch can be used either as an actuator or a sensor. Additionally, strain gauges can be used as sensors. For monitoring, acceleration sensors are used. The control system is implemented within a dSpace environment. The results show a significant reduction of the flexible vibrations. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Active control of flexible systems

Since mechanically flexible systems are distributed-parameter systems, they are infinite-dimensional in theory and, in practice, must be modelled by large-dimensional systems. The fundamental problem of actively controlling very flexible systems is to control a large-dimensional system with a much smaller dimensional controller. For example, a large number of elastic modes may be needed to describe the behavior of a flexible satellite; however, active control of all these modes would be out of the question due to onboard computer limitations and modelling error. Consequently, active control must be restricted to a few critical modes. The effect of the residual (uncontrolled) modes on the closed-loop system is often ignored. In this paper, we consider the class of flexible systems that can be described by a generalized wave equation,u _tt+Au=F, which relates the displacementu(x,t) of a body Θ inn-dimensional space to the applied force distributionF(x,t). The operatorA is a time-invariant symmetric differential operator with a discrete, semibounded spectrum. This class of distributed parameter systems includes vibrating strings, membranes, thin beams, and thin plates. The control force distribution $$F(x,t) = \sum\limits_{i = 1}^M { \delta (x - x_i )f_i (t)} $$ is provided byM point force actuators located at pointsx _i on the body. The displacements (or their velocities) are measured byP point sensorsy _i(t)=u(z _j,t), oru _t(z _j,t),j=1, 2, ...,P, located at various pointsz _j along the body. We obtain feedback control ofN modes of the flexible system and display the controllability and observability conditions required for successful operation. We examine the control and observation spillover due to the residual modes and show that the combined effect of spillover can lead to instabilities in the closed-loop system. We suggest some remedies for spillover, including a straightforward phase-locked loop prefilter, to remove the instability mechanism. To illustrate the concepts of this paper, we present the results of some numerical studies on the active control of a simply supported beam. The beam dynamics are modelled by the Euler-Bernoulli partial differential equation, and the feedback controller is obtained by the above procedures. One actuator and one sensor (at different locations) are used to control three modes of the beam quite effectively. A fourth residual mode is simulated, and the destabilizing effect of control and observation spillover together on this mode is clearly illustrated. Once observation spillover is eliminated (e.g., by prefiltering the sensor outputs), the effect of control spillover alone on this system is negligible.     

Method of Integro-Differential Relations for Optimal Beam Control

An approach to modelling and optimization of controlled dynamical systems with distributed elastic and inertial parameters are considered. The general method of integro-differential relations (IDR) for solving a wide class of boundary value problems is developed and criteria of solution quality are proposed [1]. A numerical algorithm for discrete approximation of controlled motions is worked out [2] and applied to design the optimal control low steering an elastic system to the terminal position and minimizing the given objective function [3]. The polynomial control of plane motions of a homogeneous cantilever beam is investigated. The optimal control problem of beam transportation from the initial rest position to given terminal states, in which the full mechanical energy of the system reaches its minimal value, is considered. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Stabilizing a Flexible Beam on a Cart: A Distributed Port-Hamiltonian Approach

Motion planning and stabilization of the inverted pendulum on a cart is a much-studied problem in the control community. We focus our attention on asymptotically stabilizing a vertically upright flexible beam fixed on a moving cart. The flexibility of the beam is restricted only to the direction along the traverse of the cart. The control objective is to attenuate the effect of disturbances on the vertically upright profile of the beam. The control action available is the motion of the cart. By regulating this motion, we seek to regulate the shape of the beam. The problem presents a combination of a system described by a partial differential equation (PDE) and a cart modeled as an ordinary differential equation (ODE) as well as a controller which we restrict to an ODE. We set our problem in the port-controlled Hamiltonian framework. The interconnection of the flexible beam to the cart is viewed as a power-conserving interconnection of an infinite-dimensional system to a finite-dimensional system. The energy-Casimir method is employed to obtain the controller. In this method, we look for some constants of motion that are invariant of the choice of controller Hamiltonian. These Casimirs relate the controller states to the states of the system. We finally prove the stability of the equilibrium configuration of the closed-loop system.     

Flexible-link robots with combined trajectory tracking and vibration control

This work deals with asymptotic trajectory tracking and active damping injection on a flexible-link robot by application of Multiple Positive Position Feedback. The flexible-link robot is modeled and validated by using finite element methods and experimental modal analysis, and then a reduced order model of the flexible-link robot dynamics, up to the first dominant vibration modes, is employed for experimental evaluation on a test rig. Then, a combined control scheme is synthesized in two parts: first, a Sliding-Mode Control based on a cascaded Proportional-Integral-Derivative for regulation and trajectory tracking tasks, via a direct current motor torque as the control input for the overall system dynamics, and, second, a Multiple Positive Position Feedback for active vibration control and attenuation of residual vibrations on the tip position, via the input voltage applied to a piezoelectric patch actuator attached directly on the flexible beam. The results are evaluated on an experimental platform, where the dynamic performance of the overall active vibration control scheme leads to fast and effective tracking results, with damping ratios increased up to 300%.     

Active suppression of nonlinear composite beam vibrations by selected control algorithms

This paper is focused on application of different control algorithms for a flexible, geometrically nonlinear beam-like structure with Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) actuator. Based on the mathematical model of a geometrically nonlinear beam, analytical solutions for Nonlinear Saturation Controller (NSC) are obtained using Multiple Scale Method. Effectiveness of different control strategies is evaluated by numerical simulations in Matlab–Simulink software. Then, the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) controller and selected control algorithms are implemented to the physical system to compare numerical and experimental results. Detailed analysis for the NSC system is carried out, especially for high level of amplitude and wide range of frequencies of excitation. Finally, the efficiency of the considered controllers is tested experimentally for a more complex autoparametric “L-shape” beam system.     

An elastic beam approach to predictive vehicle motion planning

Vehicle guidance systems are among the latest automotive developments. Examples are A daptive C ruise C ontrol (ACC), lane departure warning and active lane keeping. However, the rapid development of environmental sensor systems such as radar, lidar and video technologies in combination with data fusion of the single sensor signals enables further applications as for example lane changing assistance, collision avoidance or even autonomous driving. For all of these functions, trajectories have to be planned and, depending on the application, to be communicated to the driver. Recently, methods originally developed in robotics as for example so-called elastic bands are adapted for road vehicle applications. Here an virtual elastic beam is proposed to guide the vehicle. The beam is deflected by virtual potential fields generated by obstacles in the traffic space. In doing so, the elastic beam avoids obstacles and provides collision-free trajectories, while its bending stiffness counteracts the curvature of the trajectory. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Poincaré–Cosserat Equations for the Lighthill Three-dimensional Large Amplitude Elongated Body Theory: Application to Robotics

In this article, we describe a dynamic model of the three-dimensional eel swimming. This model is analytical and suited to the online control of eel-like robots. The proposed solution is based on the Large Amplitude Elongated Body Theory of Lighthill and a framework recently presented in Boyer et al. (IEEE Trans. Robot. 22:763–775, 2006) for the dynamic modeling of hyper-redundant robots. This framework was named “macro-continuous” since, at this macroscopic scale, the robot (or the animal) is considered as a Cosserat beam internally (and continuously) actuated. This article introduces new results in two directions. Firstly, it extends the Lighthill theory to the case of a self-propelled body swimming in three dimensions, while including a model of the internal control torque. Secondly, this generalization of the Lighthill model is achieved due to a new set of equations, which are also derived in this article. These equations generalize the Poincaré equations of a Cosserat beam to an open system containing a fluid stratified around the slender beam.     

非线性梁结构的参数振动稳定性及其主动控制

采用压电材料研究了参数激励非线性梁结构的运动稳定性及其主动控制,通过速度反馈控制算法获得主动阻尼,利用Hamilton原理建立含阻尼的立方非线性运动方程,采用多尺度方法求解运动方程获得稳定性区域．通过数值算例,分析了控制增益、外激振力幅值等因素对稳定性区域和幅频曲线特性的影响．分析表明:控制增益增大,结构所能承受的轴向力也增大,在一定范围内结构的主动阻尼比也增加;随着控制增益的增大,响应幅值逐渐降低,但所需的控制电压存在峰值点．     

Resolving Controls for the Boundary Approximate Controllability of Sandwich Beams with Uncertainties the Green’s Function Approach

Mechanics of Composite Materials - The boundary approximate null-controllability of an Euler–Bernoulli sandwich beam subjected to a dynamically active distributed load is considered. The...     

Characterisation and Modelling of Piezoceramic Actuator Hystereses

Piezoelectric ceramics are often used as actuators in smart structures technology. In the vast majority of papers dealing with this topic only linear constitutive relations are used. However, the electric field-strain relations of such actuators show hysteretic behaviour, which means that the piezoelectric coupling coefficient is not constant. In this study the hysteresis of a mechanically unconstrained actuator is obtained using the Michelson interferometry. The hysteretic behaviour is modelled by a Preisach model. Using these experimental data, for the modelling of an active structure with embedded piezoelectric actuators the actual coupling coefficient can then be determined with the help of the Preisach model. With this procedure the actuation strain of an embedded actuator, including the physical nonlinearities, can be calculated using the material characteristics obtained for an unconstrained actuator. For an experimental validation of the method outlined above, a Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) actuator is characterised experimentally and then glued to a cantilever beam. Then, the tip displacement of the actuated beam is determined experimentally and simulated numerically using the above method. The experimental and numerical results agree reasonably well if the shear lag due to the bonding layer between the actuator and the structure is taken into consideration. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A projection approach to optimal control of elastic beam dynamics

Controlled lateral motions of an elastic beam – extended body with a cuboid shape – are studied. A generalized statement of the initial-boundary value problem is given in the frame of 3D linear elasticity based on the integral formulation of constitutive relations. A numerical approach relying on the Fourier method and semi-discretization technique is proposed to design the optimal boundary control that moves the beam to a given final state and minimizes a quadratic cost function. Some results of numerical simulation and quality analysis are presented and discussed. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)