Energy-recycling semi-active method for vibration suppression with piezoelectric transducers

A novel energy-recycling method is studied that enables effective semi-active vibration suppression with piezoelectric transducers embedded or bonded to a structure. In this method, the energy converted from the mechanical energy of a vibrating structure is collected in the capacitor of a piezoelectric transducer as an electric charge, and to suppress vibration, rather than dissipate the energy, the polarity of the charge is changed according to the state of vibration. With this method, no energy is supplied to the total system of the structure and transducers with shunt circuit, which means that the system is stable. A simple electric circuit and a control law for multiple-degree-of-freedom systems with multiple piezoelectric transducers are proposed for this method based on energy recycling. Numerical simulation of vibration suppression of a truss structure shows that this method is more effective in suppressing vibration than both a semi-active method without energy recycling and that based on the use of an optimally tuned passive system. A preliminary experiment with a truss structure also shows that this method can effectively suppress vibration in an actual structure. However, there was some discrepancy in the experimental results compared to the results of the numerical simulation performed assuming ideal linear characteristics of the piezoelectric transducers estimated from a static test.