Passive control of hydro-elastic vibrations of plates using shunted piezoelectric patches

Suppressing structural vibrations is a vital engineering requirement in many applications. In this study, an analytical model is initially developed for predicting the forced vibration response of a fluid-loaded plate with arbitrary boundary conditions attached to piezoelectric patches. Each piezoelectric patch is connected to a resonant shunt circuit consisting of a resistor and an inductor. Using the analytical model, it is demonstrated that the vibration control is effective for cantilever plates immersed in water. This is demonstrated first for the vibration control at individual resonance frequencies, and then at multiple resonance frequencies simultaneously using several separate piezoelectric patches. A parametric study is then performed to investigate how the efficiency of the method varies with the plate thickness, patch thickness, and patch size. It is observed that although the vibration reduction decreases steadily with increasing plate thickness, the shunted piezoelectric patches can still effectively damp the plate vibration, and their performance can be further improved by increasing the size and/or thickness of the patches.