Enhancement of efficiency of vibration suppression using piezoelectric elements and LR circuit by amplification of electrical resonance

This paper describes a vibration suppression method based on passive vibration suppression using a piezoelectric element and an LR circuit. The proposed method applies a voltage that is proportional to the displacement or acceleration of the host structure to the LR circuit in series. Because the applied voltage equivalently increases the voltage generated by the piezoelectric effect in the piezoelectric element, the effect of the vibration suppression is increased with an increase in the applied voltage. The proposed method is categorized as a hybrid vibration suppression method that involves only an analog circuit. The governing equations were formulated, and the optimum values of the inductance and resistance were theoretically derived using the two fixed point method as well as the passive method. The characteristic features of the proposed method were theoretically investigated by comparing the added stiffness and damping, amount of the applied voltage, and time-averaged power of the applied voltage with those of the conventional methods. In addition, the stability of the proposed method was theoretically analyzed. The effectiveness of the proposed method and the theoretical analysis were verified through experiments. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.