Abstract
This paper presents the experimental development of a simple and effective vibration control scheme by employing smart structure technology. Due to high accuracy and high slew rate requirements for lightweight structures, vibration control becomes a challenging task. In this paper, it is proposed to actively control rotor blade tip vibration with collocated piezoceramic sensors and actuators. To include the flexible characteristics of rotor blades in our analysis, a flexible cantilever beam is used to simulate the dynamic behavior of the cantilever beam due to external disturbances, generated by a magnetic shaker. The shaker was installed near the tip of the simulated rotor blade to maximize the external excitations. Piezoceramic sensor and actuator were used and evenly distributed as elements of the smart structure. The mathematical model of the smart structure including the piezoceramic sensors and actuators was determined by combining both analytical and experimental schemes. Based on the derived experimental dynamic model, a proportional gain feedback controller was implemented to compensate the vibratory deflections of the underlying structure. The results of the work show that the proposed control methodology along with the smart structure can suppress more than 80% of the measured structural vibration, which is considered satisfactory.
