Piezoelectric Actuators Placement Using Genetic Algorithm and Active Vibration Control of Smart Plane Frame Structure

Abstract

A Genetic Algorithm-based optimisation scheme is presented to find the optimum actuator elements infinite element analysis for active vibration control applications. The dynamic strain data is used to reduce the size of search domain for the actuators placement problem. A modal velocity, feedback control is employed to estimate the active damping of piezoelectric actuators. The structural damping index is taken as a fitness function; which directly reflects the status of active damping effect for a given piezoelectric actuator set. Modal preference is attempted by assigning a different weighting factor in the fitness function for desired modes to have better controllability. As an illustration, a 20-member smart plane frame is modeled with d3I based extension-bending piezoelectric actuators using 2-D piezoelectric Timoshenko beam element. It is shown that the vibration of first four elastic modes is actively controlled with optimally, selected four piezoelectric actuators.