Smart damping of vibration of annular plates by the design of a cylindrically orthotropic piezoelectric fiber-reinforced composite actuator

In the present work, the active control of vibration of annular plates is presented by the design of a cylindrically orthotropic short/continuous piezoelectric fiber-reinforced composite (SPFRC/CPFRC) actuator. The unidirectional piezoelectric fibers of the smart composite are oriented along the radial direction within a reference cylindrical coordinate frame and poled in the same direction. First, a finite element analysis of the effective electro-elastic properties of the smart composite is presented, and the optimal geometry of its unit cell is determined with an objective of improved magnitude of an effective piezoelectric coefficient (e11, 1 for radial direction) for both short (SPFRC) and continuous (CPFRC) forms of piezoelectric fibers. Next, an arrangement of surface electrodes is presented for its effectual utilization as an actuator based on the coefficient e11. Subsequently, the smart actuator is attached to the surface of a host annular plate in the form of actuator patches for substantiating its control performance by the numerical evaluation of controlled frequency responses of the overall smart annular plate. The actuator patches act as smart dampers by means of supplying voltage according to the velocity feedback control strategy. The numerical results reveal more control power of the SPFRC actuator than that of a CPFRC actuator even though the magnitude of the major effective coefficient (e11) for SPFRC is lesser than that for CPFRC. The overall analysis shows a meaningful control power of present cylindrically orthotropic SPFRC/CPFRC actuators in control of vibration of annular plates and suggests short piezoelectric fibers instead of continuous fibers within it (smart actuator) for achieving its larger control power, flexibility and conformability.