VIBRATION CONTROL OF PROPELLER SHAFT USING PIEZOELECTRIC COMPOSITE ACTUATORS

This paper presents a solution of the vibration reduction in the Propeller shafts. Generally, the vibration mode in propeller shafts can be divided into the bending and torsional vibrations. Since the bending and torsional vibration are the critical source of vibration problem in the propeller shaft, it is necessary to analyze bending and torsion vibration together with the natural frequencies and demonstrate optimal position of damping to reduce the vibrations.. In this paper, active vibration control system of propeller shafts is introduced to actively absorb the combined bending and torsional vibrations. Proposed active damping structure is built by embedding the piezofiber actuators that are composed of piezopatches based on the Macro Fiber Composite (MFC) technology. The MFC is an innovative actuator that offers high performance and flexibility. The MFC consists of rectangular piezo ceramic rods sandwiched between layers of adhesive and electroded polyimide film, which is heat and chemical resistant polymers. Since the MFC patch is more flexible, durable and powerful than other piezomaterials, it is the best candidate of actuator to apply to the curved surface of the shaft. In order to calculate the vibration modes in the propeller shafts, analytical method and Finite Element Method (FEM) are used. And to simulate effect of vibration damping, Piezoelectricthermal analysis is used, too. Experimental investigations are also conducted by PID controller. For the desired vibration damping performance with the limited number of MFC actuators, PID controller is designed and its gains are tuned. Finally, control results are shown. So, the results provide an outlook for the active control using the multi-mode resonance controllers.