Vibration characteristics of a rotating flexible arm with ACLD treatment

In this paper, the vibration behavior and control of a clamped–free rotating flexible cantilever arm with fully covered active constrained layer damping (ACLD) treatment are investigated. The arm is rotating in a horizontal plane in which the gravitational effect and rotary inertia are neglected. The stress–strain relationship for the viscoelastic material (VEM) is described by a complex shear modulus while the shear deformations in the two piezoelectric layers are neglected. Hamilton's principle in conjunction with finite element method (FEM) is used to derive the non-linear coupled differential equations of motion and the associated boundary conditions that describe the rigid hub angle rotation, the arm transverse displacement and the axial deformations of the three-layer composite. This refined model takes into account the effects of centrifugal stiffening due to the rotation of the beam and the potential energies of the VEM due to extension and bending. Active controllers are designed with PD for the piezosensor and actuator. The vibration frequencies and damping factors of the closed-loop beam/ACLD system are obtained after solving the characteristic complex eigenvalue problem numerically. The effects of different rotating speed, thickness ratio and loss factor of the VEM as well as different controller gain on the damped frequency and damping ratio are presented. The results of this study will be useful in the design of adaptive and smart structures for vibration suppression and control in rotating structures such as rotorcraft blades or robotic arms.     

Active damping of a micro-cantilever piezo-composite beam

Thick PZT films are of major interest in the actuation of mechanical structures. One of the promising fields deals with active damping. Since it is a dynamic application, hard-PZT type of screen-printed films are suited to this kind of use. Nevertheless, the drop in dielectric, ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties induced by the fabrication process is a serious constraint and it needs to be evaluated. The first section of this paper will present the mechanical system used for the experimental investigations. These investigations look to quantify the electromechanical properties of the films once the deposition process is achieved. The experimental observations highlighting the efficiency of hard-PZT thick films in active damping despite the drop in the electromechanical properties will then be considered. The control strategy used in the experiments can be called pseudo-direct-velocity feedback. Then the constitutive relations of the composites will be needed to derive the roots locus analysis by means of finite element modelling on one hand and through the roots of the partial derivative equations on the other hand. The unconditional stability of the uncollocated system will be demonstrated and its typical asymptotic behavior when the gain tends towards infinity will be explained.     

Optimal distributed control of a continuous beam with damping

Optimal control of a damped two-span beam is studied with the objective of minimizing its deflection and velocity in a given period of time with the minimum possible expenditure of force. The beam undergoes transient vibrations and is subject to given displacement and velocity initial conditions. The control is exercised by means of a transverse distributed force. The multiple objectives of the problem lead to a vector performance criterion which is reduced to a scalar one by using the concept of Pareto optimality. Necessary and sufficient conditions of optimality are expressed in the form of a maximum principle which leads to an explicit expression for the control force. The behaviour of the controlled beam is numerically studied which indicates that optimally controlled distributed forces are effective in damping out the dynamic response. Relations between various objectives are studied by means of optimal trade-off curves showing the best performance of the controlled beam.     

An enhanced beam model for constrained layer damping and a parameter study of damping contribution

An enhanced analytical model is presented based on an extension of previous models for constrained layer damping (CLD) in beam-like structures. Most existing CLD models are based on the assumption that shear deformation in the core layer is the only source of damping in the structure. However, previous research has shown that other types of deformation in the core layer, such as deformations from longitudinal extension and transverse compression, can also be important. In the enhanced analytical model developed here, shear, extension, and compression deformations are all included. This model can be used to predict the natural frequencies and modal loss factors. The numerical study shows that compared to other models, this enhanced model is accurate in predicting the dynamic characteristics. As a result, the model can be accepted as a general computation model. With all three types of damping included and the formulation used here, it is possible to study the impact of the structure's geometry and boundary conditions on the relative contribution of each type of damping. To that end, the relative contributions in the frequency domain for a few sample cases are presented.     

Effects of substrate treatment on the electroluminescence performance of flexible OLEDs

Electroluminescence (EL) performance of flexible organic light-emitting device (FOLED) has been found to be highly dependent upon the morphology of the surface of the indium thin oxide (ITO)/plastic substrate as well as the patterning and processing conditions of the substrate. We will present evidence showing that luminance efficiency of FOLED can be greatly improved by pretreatment. Surface analysis of the ITO/PET by means of atomic force microscope (AFM) and optical microscope will be compared with that of the ITO/glass and the influence of flexible OLEDs substrate treatment by various methods on EL performance will also be discussed.     

Dynamic stability of a rotating beam with a constrained damping layer

The dynamic behavior and dynamic instability of the rotating sandwich beam with a constrained damping layer subjected to axial periodic loads are studied by the finite element method. The influences of rotating speed, thickness ratio, setting angle and hub radius ratio on the resonant frequencies and modal system loss factors are presented. The regions of instability for simple and combination resonant frequencies are determined from the Mathieu equation that is obtained from the parametric excitation of the rotating sandwich beam. The regions of dynamic instability for various parameters are presented.     

Ultrafast optical beam deflection in a pump probe configuration

Propagation of a signal beam in an Al Ga As/Ga As waveguide multiple-prism light deflector is theoretically investigated by solving the scalar Helmholtz equation to obtain the dependences of the temporal and spatial resolvable characteristics of the ultrafast deflector on the material dispersion of Ga As including group velocity dispersion and angular dispersion,interface reflection,and interface scattering of multiple-prism deflector.Furthermore,we experimentally confirm that,in this ultrafast beam deflection device,the deflecting angle of the signal light beam is linear with the pump fluence and the temporal resolution of the ultrafast deflection is 10 ps.Our results show that the improvement of the temporal and spatial resolvable performances is possible by properly choosing the structural parameters and enhancing the quality of the device.     

A note on the damping of large amplitude beam vibrations

This paper presents a new series-type method for solving the eigenvalue problems of irregularly shaped plates clamped at all edges. An irregularly shaped plate is formed on a simply supported rectangular plate by rigidly fixing several segments. With the reaction forces and moments acting on all edges of an actual plate of irregular shape regarded as unknown harmonic loads, the stationary response of the plate to these loads is expressed by the use of the Green function. The force and moment distributions along the edges are expanded into Fourier series with unknown coefficients, and the homogeneous equations for the coefficients are derived by restraint conditions on the edges. The natural frequencies and the mode shapes of the actual plate are determined by calculating the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the equations. The method is applied to a cross-shaped, an I-shaped and an L-shaped plate clamped at all edges, the natural frequencies and the mode shapes of the plates are calculated numerically and the effect of the shape is discussed.     

Modal characteristics of a flexible beam with multiple distributed actuators

A flexible structure with surface-bonded piezoceramic patches is modelled using Timoshenko beam theory. Exact mode shapes and natural frequencies associated with the flexural motion are computed for various piezoceramic distributed actuator arrangements. The effects of patch placement and of shear on the modal characteristics are demonstrated using a cantilevered beam as an example. Perfect bonding of the piezoceramic to the beam substructure is assumed, and for the purposes of this paper only passive piezoceramic properties are considered. The modelling technique and results obtained in a closed form are intended to assist investigations into the modelling and control of active structures with surface-bonded piezoceramic actuators.     

Response and damping of a rectangular cantilever plate with vibrating beam dampers

In this work the use of beams as auxiliary mass dampers for cantilever plates is considered. Because the cantilever plate problem, which is of strong industrial interest, does not lend itself to a Lévy-type solution, the procedure developed by Ritz is used. Structural damping is incorporated into the main and auxiliary systems by treating them as having a complex elastic modulus. With appropriate selection of the parameters, the fundamental resonance of the plate is split into two new ones with considerably suppressed responses. In order to verify the analysis, an experimental investigation was carried out and the results obtained were compared with the theory developed.     

Integrated design of piezoelectric damping system for flexible structure

This paper aims at developing an integrated design method of the active/passive hybrid type of piezoelectric damping system for reducing the dynamic response of the flexible structures due to external dynamic loads. The design method is based on the numerical optimization technique whose objective function is a control effort of the active damping. A vibration suppression performance, which is evaluated by the maximum value of the gain of the frequency response function of the structure, is constrained. In order to demonstrate the structural damping capability of the hybrid type of piezoelectric damping system designed by proposed method, numerical simulation and laboratory experiment will be done using a three-story flexible structure model equipped with 12 surface bonded PZT tiles pairs. Both numerical and experimental results indicate that the optimally designed hybrid piezoelectric damping system can be successfully achieving excellent performance as compared to a conventional purely active piezoelectric damping system.     

Residual vibration reduction of a flexible beam deploying from a translating hub

This paper presents a method for reducing the residual vibration of a flexible beam deployed from a translating hub. Whereas previous studies have discussed reducing vibration in translating constant-length beams, this study investigates a vibration reduction method for translating beams of variable length. The partial differential equation of motion for a translating beam is derived and transformed into a variational equation. Based on the discretized equations from the variational equation, the dynamic responses of the flexible beam under translation are analyzed. A vibration reduction method is proposed that is effective for both constant- and variable-length deploying translating beams.     

Effect of laser beam induced nonlinearity on the performance of crystalline lens

This paper presents the performance of the human crystalline lens having gradient index (GRIN) structure in the presence of a moderate power laser pulse. Nonlinear dynamical equations have been set-up governing the laser pulse propagation in the lens by taking into account the nonlinearity introduced by the laser pulse. Semi-analytical results have been obtained by using the paraxial ray approximation when GRIN and nonlinearity effects are simultaneously present. Performance of the lens has been analyzed in two explicit cases. In the first case, only the GRIN structure is considered while in the second case the nonlinearity and the GRIN both are considered. A moderate power laser pulse can be used for self-focusing in the crystalline lens when GRIN effects alone are not sufficient to focus the laser pulse in the crystalline lens.     

The steady state out-of-plane response of a Timoshenko curved beam with internal damping

The steady state out-of-plane response of a Timoshenko curved beam with internal damping to a sinusoidally varying point force or moment is determined by use of the transfer matrix approach. For this purpose, the equations of out-of-plane vibration of a curved beam are written as a coupled set of the first order differential equations by using the transfer matrix of the beam. Once the matrix has been determined by numerical integration of the equations, the steady state response of the beam is obtained. The method is applied to free-clamped non-uniform beams with circular, elliptical, catenary and parabolical neutral axes driven at the free end; the driving point impedance and force or moment transmissibility are calculated numerically and the effects of the slenderness ratio, varying cross-section and the function expressing the neutral axis on them are studied.     

Stamp printing of silicon-nanomembrane-based photonic devices onto flexible substrates with a suspended configuration

In this Letter, we demonstrate for the first time (to our best knowledge) stamp printing of silicon nanomembrane (SiNM)-based in-plane photonic devices onto a flexible substrate using a modified transfer printing method that utilizes a suspended configuration, which can adjust the adhesion between the released SiNM and the "handle" silicon wafer. With this method, 230 nm thick, 30 μm wide, and up to 5.7 cm long SiNM-based waveguides are transferred to flexible Kapton films with >90% transfer yield. The propagation loss of the transferred waveguides is measured to be ~1.1 dB/cm. Scalability of this approach to transfer intricate structures, such as photonic crystal waveguides and multimode interference couplers with a minimum feature size of 200 nm and 2 μm, respectively, is also demonstrated.     

Finite element analysis and experimental study on dynamic properties of a composite beam with viscoelastic damping

This paper investigates the frequency dependent viscoelastic dynamics of a multifunctional composite structure from finite element analysis and experimental validation. The frequency-dependent behavior of the stiffness and damping of a viscoelastic material directly affects the system's modal frequencies and damping, and results in complex vibration modes and differences in the relative phase of vibration. A second order three parameter Golla–Hughes–McTavish (GHM) method and a second order three fields Anelastic Displacement Fields (ADF) approach are used to implement the viscoelastic material model, enabling the straightforward development of time domain and frequency domain finite elements, and describing the frequency dependent viscoelastic behavior. Considering the parameter identification a strategy to estimate the fractional order of the time derivative and the relaxation time is outlined. Agreement between the curve fits using both the GHM and ADF and experiment is within 0.001 percent error. Continuing efforts are addressing the material modulus comparison of the GHM and the ADF model. There may be a theoretical difference between viscoelastic degrees of freedom at nodes and elements, but their numerical results are very close to each other in the specific frequency range of interest. With identified model parameters, numerical simulation is carried out to predict the damping behavior in its first two vibration modes. The experimental testing on the layered composite beam validates the numerical predication. Experimental results also show that elastic modulus measured from dynamic response yields more accurate results than static measurement, such as tensile testing, especially for elastomers.