Active vibration damping with electro-active polymers using state feedback control

Lightweight structures are a major measure to obtain a continuous reduction of CO2 emission in the automotive sector. Therefore, car body sheets are designed thinner and thinner, what results in a lower structural damping. As a consequence, vibrations can be noticed acoustically through airborne and structure-borne noise and in some cases even visually. To reduce the vibration response of such a structure, especially while excited in the area of the eigenfrequencies, an active vibration control system is being developed and applied to the sheet structure. By using actuators based on electro-active polymer (EAP) technology, the vibration can be damped and the total weight of the vehicle can still be reduced. In order to control an EAP actuator, the control electronics have to be developed considering the boundary conditions for this new active vibration control technology (e.g. high voltage power supply). The results of this research project are brought together on a test bench to demonstrate the feasibility of the damping system and to evaluate the simulation based control methodology.