Modeling and design of passive electric networks interconnecting piezoelectric transducers for distributed vibration control

In the literature, collocated or distributed arrays of piezoelectric patches are employed to actively control structural vibrations. In the present work, in order to damp beam vibrations a completely passive electric controller is designed, exploiting distributed piezoelectric transduction. In this way a simultaneous multimodal vibration suppression is obtained. The optimal electric network (interconnecting the piezoelectric transducers) is synthesized as a finite differences approximation of the derived distributed (infinite dimensional) optimal controller. A prototype of the proposed novel smart structure (Piezo-ElectroMechanical beam) is designed, allowing for appreciating its technical feasibility and effectiveness.