Integrated distributed sensing and active vibration suppression of flexible manipulators using distributed piezoelectrics

Structural oscillation of flexible robot manipulators would severely hamper their operation accuracy and precision. This article presents an integrated distributed sensor and active distributed vibration actuator design for elastic or flexible robot structures. The proposed distributed sensor and actuator is a layer, or multilayer of piezoelectric material directly attached on the flexible component needed to be monitored and controlled. The integrated piezoelectric sensor/actuator can monitor the oscillation as well as actively and directly constrain the undesirable oscillation of the flexible robot manipulators by direct/converse piezoelectric effects, respectively. A general theory on the distributed sensing and active vibration control using the piezoelectric elements is first proposed. An equivalent finite element formulation is also developed. A physical model with distributed sensor/actuator is tested in laboratory; and a finite element model with the piezoelectric actuator is simulated. The distributed sensing and control effectiveness are studied.     

Distributed structural identification and control of shells using distributed piezoelectrics: Theory and finite element analysis

Distributed dynamic identification and vibration control of high-performance flexible structures has drawn much attention in recent years. This article presents an analytical and finite-element study on a distributed piezoelectric sensor and distributed actuator coupled with flexible shells and plates. The integrated piezoelectric sensor/actuator can monitor the oscillation as well as actively control the structural vibration by the direct/converse piezoelectric effects, respectively. Based on Maxwell's equations and Love's assumptions, new theories on distributed sensing and active vibration control of a generic shell using the distributed piezoelectrics are derived. These theories can be easily simplified to account for plates, cylinders, beams, etc. A new piezoelectric finite element is also formulated using the variational principle and Hamilton's principle. A piezoelectric micropositioning device was first studied; analytical solutions are compared closely with experimental and finite-element results. Distributed vibration identification and control of a zero-curvature shell-a plate-are also investigated.     

Topology optimization of piezoelectric smart structures for minimum energy consumption under active control

This paper investigates topology optimization of the electrode coverage over piezoelectric patches attached to a thin-shell structure to reduce the energy consumption of active vibration control under harmonic excitations. The constant gain velocity feedback control method is employed, and the structural frequency response under control is analyzed with the finite element method. In the mathematical formulation of the proposed topology optimization model, the total energy consumption of the control system is taken as the objective function, and a constraint of the maximum allowable dynamic compliance is considered. The pseudo-densities indicating the distribution of surface electrode coverage over the piezoelectric layers are chosen as the design variables, and a penalized model is employed to relate the active damping effect and these design variables. The sensitivity analysis scheme of the control energy consumption with respect to the design variables is derived with the adjoint-variable method. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed optimization model is able to generate optimal topologies of electrode coverage over the piezoelectric layers, which can effectively reduce the energy consumption of the control system. Also, numerical comparisons with a minimum-volume optimization model show the advantage of the proposed method with respect to energy consumption. The proposed method may provide useful guidance to the layout optimization of piezoelectric smart structures where the energy supply is limited, such as miniature vibration control systems.     

压电复合梁高阶有限元模型与主动振动控制研究

大型柔性空间结构的振动控制问题引起了广泛的关注.压电材料以其低质量、宽频带和适应性强等特点,非常适合于柔性空间结构的振动控制.本文针对上下表面粘贴有分布式压电传感器和作动器的智能层梁结构,提出了一种考虑压电材料对结构质量、刚度影响的高阶有限元模型.考虑到空间结构可能承受较大的热载荷,在模型中计及了压电材料的热电耦合效应.采用常增益负反馈控制方法、常增益速度负反馈控制方法、Lyapunov反馈控制方法和线性二次型调节器方法(LQR)设计主动控制器,实现了智能层梁结构脉冲激励下的振动主动控制.仿真结果表明,LQR方法更能有效的实现结构振动控制,并且具有更低的作动器峰值电压,但不能消除热载荷引起的结构静变形.     

基于压电材料振动半主动控制仿真研究

近年来,我国航天事业得到了快速发展,飞行器的振动控制变得越发重要。在振动控制领域采用传统的阻尼材料进行抑振,已满足不了当前的需求,因此利用压电材料对结构振动进行控制已成为一个新兴领域。压电材料具有以下优点:机电耦合特性好,频带宽,体积小,质量轻,即可做传感器又可做驱动器使用特点。振动控制分为主动、被动及半主动控制,其中基于压电材料的同步开关阻尼技术(SSD)的半主动控制最为流行。三种同步开关阻尼技术:自感知SSDI(电感阻尼)技术,基于速度检测的SSDI(电感阻尼)技术,自感知SSDNC(负电容阻尼)技术。主要通过机电模型分析,电路原理分析及仿真分析,数据分析的方式来说明这三种技术工作原理及优缺点。     

VIBRATION CONTROL OF A SMART STRUCTURE USING PERIODIC OUTPUT FEEDBACK TECHNIQUE

Active vibration control is an important problem in structures. One of the ways to tackle this problem is to make the structure smart, adaptive and self‐controlling. The objective of active vibration control is to reduce the vibration of a system by automatic modification of the system's structural response. This work features the modeling and design of a Periodic Output Feedback (POF) control technique for the vibration control of a smart flexible cantilever beam system for a Single Input Single Output case. A POF controller is designed for the beam by bonding patches of piezoelectric layer as sensor/actuator to the master structure at different locations along the length of the beam. The entire structure is modeled in state space form using the Finite Element Method by dividing the structure into 3, 4, 5 elements, thus giving rise to three types of systems, viz., system 1 (beam divided into 3 finite elements), system 2 (4 finite elements), system 3 (5 finite elements). POF controllers are designed for the above three types of systems for different sensor/actuator locations along the length of the beam by retaining the first two vibratory modes. The smart cantilever beam model is developed using the concept of piezoelectric bonding and Euler‐Bernouli theory principles. The effect of placing the sensor/actuator at various locations along the length of the beam for all the three types of systems considered is observed and the conclusions are drawn for the best performance and for the smallest magnitude of the control input required to control the vibrations of the beam. The tip displacements with the controller is obtained. Performance of the system is also observed by retaining the first 3 vibratory modes and the conclusions are drawn.     

Control–structural design optimization for vibration of piezoelectric intelligent truss structures

Based on the design sensitivity analysis for structural dynamics in time domain, an integrated control–structural design optimization method is proposed to the vibration control of piezoelectric intelligent truss structure. In this investigation, the objective function and constraint functions include not only the conventional design indexes of structure but also the vibration control indexes and the feedback control variables. The structural design variables are optimized simultaneously with the vibration control system. The sensitivity relations for the control–structure optimization model are derived by using a new method, and the sequential linear programming algorithm is used to solve this kind of optimization problem. The numerical examples given in the paper demonstrate the effectiveness of methods and the program.     

Combined optimization of bi-material structural layout and voltage distribution for in-plane piezoelectric actuation

This paper investigates the combined optimization of bi-material structural layout and actuation voltage distribution of structures with embedded in-plane piezoelectric actuators. The maximization of the nodal displacement at a selected output port is considered as the design objective. A two-phase material model with power-law penalization is employed in the topology optimization of the actuator elements and the coupled surrounding structure. In order to incorporate the actuation voltage directly into the design for achieving the best overall actuation performance, element-wise voltage design variables are also included in the optimization. For the purpose of easy implementation of the electric system, the allowable voltage levels at an individual element are confined to three discrete values, namely zero and two prescribed values with opposite signs. To this end, a special interpolation scheme between the tri-level voltage values and the design variables is used in the optimization model. Based on the design sensitivity analysis of the objective function, the combined optimization problem is solved with the MMA algorithm. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed optimization model and numerical techniques. The optimal solutions also confirmed that larger output displacement can be achieved by introducing voltage design variables into the design problem.     

Multimode Control of a Large-Scale Robotic Manipulator

In this paper, the application of a piezoelectric stack actuator for vibration control in a large-scale robotic manipulator, called a macromanipulator, is studied. In this regard, mechanical design and mathematical modeling of the actuator are discussed. The structural flexibility of the macromanipulator includes deflection and torsional vibration modes. The vibration modes are detected using appropriate sensor attachments. Furthermore, a nominal transfer function matrix between the input signals to the actuators and the output voltages of the sensors is obtained. A closed-loop controller based on the obtained model is designed. Because of the presence of deflection and torsional vibration modes and model uncertainties resulting from manipulator motion, an robust controller is utilized. Experimental results are presented to validate the robustness and performance of the designed controller.     

Self-learning active vibration control of a flexible plate structure with piezoelectric actuator

In this paper, an active vibration control (AVC) incorporating active piezoelectric actuator and self-learning control for a flexible plate structure is presented. The flexible plate system is first modelled and simulated via a finite difference (FD) method. Then, the validity of the obtained model is investigated by comparing the plate natural frequencies predicted by the model with the reported values obtained from literature. After validating the model, a proportional or P-type iterative learning (IL) algorithm combined with a feedback controller is applied to the plate dynamics via the FD simulation platform. The algorithms were then coded in MATLAB to evaluate the performance of the control system. An optimized value of the learning parameter and an appropriate stopping criterion for the IL algorithm were also proposed. Different types of disturbances were employed to excite the plate system at different excitation points and the controller ability to attenuate the vibration of observation point was investigated. The simulation results clearly demonstrate an effective vibration suppression capability that can be achieved using piezoelectric actuator with the incorporated self-learning feedback controller.     

Optimal design of smart carriage arm in magnetic disk drive for vibration suppression

In hard disk drives, vibration suppression is very important to boost the performance of information-processing equipment. It has been expected that technology of smart structure will contribute to the development of small and light-weight mechatronics devices with the required performance. The smart structure is composed of the piezoelectric film sensor and actuator in order to reduce the structural vibration. The placement of the piezoelectric actuator and H ₂ control system are simultaneously optimized based on genetic algorithm to improve the effect on the vibration suppression. It has been verified by some applications with a plate structure and a magnetic disk drive that an enhanced performance for the vibration suppression can be achieved by the proposed optimal design method.     

Systematic design of distributed piezoelectric modal sensors/actuators for rectangular plates by optimizing the polarization profile

In this paper the problem of finding the shape of distributed piezoelectric modal sensors/actuators for plates with arbitrary boundary conditions is treated by an optimization approach. A binary function is used to model the design variable: the polarization profile of the piezoelectric layers. Contrary to what it could be expected, it is analytically proved that it is possible to find manufacturable polarization profiles taking on only two values, i.e. either positive or negative polarization. Several numerical examples are shown to corroborate that such topologies isolate particular vibration modes in the frequency domain.     

基于压电陶瓷执行器的车削振动控制系统研究

针对车削加工时振动对加工精度的影响,设计了一种车削振动主动控制系统,系统控制器采用基于人工免疫系统的改进型反馈控制器,执行器采用压电陶瓷材料设计制作,建立压电陶瓷执行器和专用刀架传递函数模型,在Matlab环境下进行建模仿真,当振动频率在50～150Hz时仿真结果表明该控制系统能抑制振幅97%以上;另外进行了现场试验,以普通45#钢为车削工件,车削深度为0.07mm,在正常转速下对车削振动进行主动控制,结果证明设计的车削振动控制系统能抑制车削振动幅度37%以上。     

Design methodology of piezoelectric energy-harvesting skin using topology optimization

This paper describes a design methodology for piezoelectric energy harvesters that thinly encapsulate the mechanical devices and exploit resonances from higher-order vibrational modes. The direction of polarization determines the sign of the piezoelectric tensor to avoid cancellations of electric fields from opposite polarizations in the same circuit. The resultant modified equations of state are solved by finite element method (FEM). Combining this method with the solid isotropic material with penalization (SIMP) method for piezoelectric material, we have developed an optimization methodology that optimizes the piezoelectric material layout and polarization direction. Updating the density function of the SIMP method is performed based on sensitivity analysis, the sequential linear programming on the early stage of the optimization, and the phase field method on the latter stage of the optimization to obtain clear optimal shapes without intermediate density. Numerical examples are provided that illustrate the validity and utility of the proposed method.     

Demonstration of optimizing piezoelectric polarization in the design of a flextensional actuator

Much effort has gone into amplifying the displacements of actuators built around piezoelectric materials (PZTs). Some researchers have used topology optimization to design compliant mechanisms that best magnify either the geometric or mechanical advantage of piezoelectric wafers or “stack” actuators. PZTs are generally poled through the “thin” direction, so actuation by an electric field in that direction only induces eigenstrains normal to the free edges. Some researchers have shown advantages of “shear mode” actuation, and material scientists have demonstrated the ability to pole a PZT in an arbitrary direction. This work attempts to justify the inclusion of the PZT polarization vector as a design variable in the design of a flextensional actuator. We present two examples based on the “cymbal” actuator: one using a simplified model to justify off-angle polarization and another using the polarization vector as a design variable to optimize the topology of a compliant mechanism.     

轿车动力总成主动隔振最优控制研究

介绍压电作动器与被动悬置串联组成的轿车动力总成主动悬置系统,分析了隔振系统的数学模型,采用最优控制原理提出了实施方法。     

Structural response of composite plates equipped with piezoelectric actuators

We propose the modelling of piezoelectric elements perfectly bonded on an elastic structure. The study aims at predicting the static and dynamic (vibration) electromechanical responses of the structure. The model is mostly based on the kinematic assumption of the Love–Kirchhoff thin plate theory including shear function with a quadratic variation of the electric potential along the thickness direction of the piezoelectric parts. A variational formulation of piezoelectricity leads to the equations of motion for an elastic plate equipped with piezoelectric elements. An important feature of the present investigation is that the stiffness and inertial contributions of the piezoelectric patch is not neglected. Moreover, the numerical simulations demonstrate the influence of the actuator position on the global and local responses of the elastic plate for two situations (i) bilayer and (ii) sandwich configurations. A number of benchmark tests are considered in order to characterize the plate deformation when applying an electric potential to the piezoelectric patch faces. Plate vibration problem is also presented and the frequencies for the axial and flexural modes are obtained. The spectra of vibration for the plate with a time-dependent electric potential are computed.     

Self-sensing actuators with passive damping for adaptive vibration control of hard disk drives

A push–pull piezoelectrically actuated devices have been developed for higher bandwidth servo systems as microactuators for fine and fast positioning, while the voice coil motor functions as a large but coarse seeking. However, the current dual-stage actuator design uses piezoelectric patches only and therefore a dual-stage servo system using enhanced active–passive hybrid micro piezoelectric actuators is proposed to improve the existing dual-stage actuators for higher precision and shock resistance, due to the incorporation of passive damping in the design. In this paper, three different configurations of self-sensing actuators (SSAs) incorporating an adaptive mechanism for vibration control of suspensions in dual-stage hard disk drives (HDDs) are investigated. In the piezo-based SSA configuration, the signal sensed due to mechanical deformation is mixed with the control input signal, which would be corrupted due to the variation of the piezoelectric capacitance when a fixed bridge circuit is used. In this study, a self-tuning adaptive compensation is used to combine with the SSA technique to extract the true sensing signal for the vibration control of suspensions in HDDs. An assembled suspension with piezoelectric microactuators is tested to demonstrate the vibration suppression performance of this adaptive structure under an external shock disturbance such as hammer excitation. The experimental results show that the target vibration modes have been suppressed effectively with using the adaptive positive position feedback controller for the enhanced SSAs with passive damping in HDDs.     

损伤自诊断自适应智能结构系统开发研究

智能结构是在结构中集成了传感元件、动作元件及控制系统，使材料结构具有自诊断、自适应和自修复功能的新型结构。本文研究损伤自诊断自适应智能结构的系统实现方案。将压电陶瓷和形状记忆合金埋入玻璃纤维－环氧树脂复合材料中，构成智能结构材料，开发了以计算机为核心的数据采集、处理及控制系统。该系统通过结构中的压电传感器阵列监测结构的完好状况，借助计算机中的分析、识别系统，可对损伤的形成、位置和类型进行判断，并在此基础上驱动结构中相应位置的形状记忆合金和压电驱动元件，对损伤的产生和扩展予以主动抑制