Purely electrical damping of vibrations in arbitrary PEM plates: a mixed non-conforming FEM-Runge-Kutta time evolution analysis

Summary A new numerical code, based upon a mixed FEM-Runge-Kutta method, is used for the analysis and design of plane 2-D smart structures. The code is applied to the study of arbitrarily shaped PEM plates, based on a weak formulation of their governing equations, [17]. The optimal parameters needed to synthesize appropriate electric networks are computed, and the overall performances of such plates are investigated. Two examples are studied: firstly, a simple case is used to test the main features of the code; secondly, a more complex PEM plate is designed and analyzed by means of the proposed numerical approach.The ideas developed in this paper were discussed with Prof. Vincenzo Ciampi, Stefano Vidoli, PhD, Corrado Maurini, MS, and Maurizio Porfiri, MS. Their friendly help and constructive criticism were really useful.