Hybrid passive-active vibration control of composite beams

Through the use of hybrid active-passive damping treatments it is possible to combine the well-known reliability, low cost and robustness of viscoelastic damping treatments and the high performance, modal selective and adaptive piezoelectric active control. Several configurations of hybrid damping treatments have already been reported in the literature. They differ mainly by the relative positions of viscoelastic treatments, sensors and piezoelectric actuators. The objective of this work is to provide a brief review of the literature concerning experimental studies on hybrid passive (viscoelastic) - active (piezoelectric) damping treatments of beams. Then, experimental results are presented and used to validate a finite element model proposed in a previous work, with special attention to an accurate prediction of viscoelastic damping frequency-dependence and piezoelectric materials sensor aspect. It is shown that the finite element model is effective in predicting both viscoelastic and piezoelectric materials vibration characteristics. Once validated, it is used to provide the optimised configurations for piezo embedded composite beams. Then, new experimental results are obtained.