A semi-passive vibration damping system powered by harvested energy

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Shen, Hui^a | Ji, Hongli^a | Qiu, Jinhao^{a; *} | Zhu, Kongjun^a

Affiliations: [a] The Aeronautic Key Laboratory for Smart Materials & Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, China

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 25 84891123; Fax: +86 25 84891123; E-mail: qiu@nuaa.edu.cn

Abstract: This paper designs and investigates a vibration damping system powered by harvested energy with the implement of the so-called SSD (Synchronized Switch Damping) technique, which is a semi-passive approach. In the semi-passive approach, the piezoelectric element is switched from open circuit to closed circuit synchronously with the structure motion. Due to this switching procedure, a phase shift induced between the strain of vibration and the resulting voltage, thus creating energy dissipation. A low-power version of the switching circuit for nonlinear processing of voltage has been designed, and by combining the switching circuit with an energy harvesting subsystem, a semi-passive vibration damping system without external power supply has been successfully developed. Its effectiveness in the single-mode resonant damping of a composite beam is validated by the experimental results.

Keywords: Piezoelectric devices, structural damping, semi-passive damping, energy harvesting

DOI: 10.3233/JAE-2009-1059

Journal: International Journal of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 219-233, 2009