Active Vibration Control of Smart Functionally Graded Beams

This work is devoted to examine the performance of the constraining layer of the active constrained layer damping (ACLD) treatment made of the active fiber composites (AFC) materials for vibration control of functionally graded (FG) beams. The task of investigating the performance of the active constrained layer damping (ACLD) treatment has been accomplished to demonstrate the use of AFCs as the materials for distributed actuators. Finite Element (FE) model is developed to describe the open loop and closed loop dynamics of the FG beams integrated with the patches of the ACLD treatment. The closed loop frequency response functions computed by the FE models reveal that the ACLD treatment with its constraining layer composed of AFC material significantly enhances the damping characteristics of the FG beams.The performance of the ACLD treatment when the orientation angle of the piezoelectric fibers of the AFC constraining layer is varied has also been investigated. Such variation of piezoelectric fiber orientation angle significantly affects the controllability of the ACLD treatment for active damping of the FG beams. The investigations carried out here may be useful for further experimental verifications and suggest the potential use of AFC materials for developing new distributed actuators of light-weight smart structures.