Self-powered structural vibration damping based on the self-sensing semi-passive technique

In the application of vibration damping systems using piezoelectric elements, there are three approaches: active control, passive control, semi-passive control. However, active approach has been limited by their requirement for complicated signal processing system and bulky power amplifier, and the passive vibration control systems are simpler, but they are sensitive to variation of the system parameters. In order to overcome these drawbacks, a new method of semi-active vibration control has been developed recently. In this paper, a self-powered version of the electronic nonlinear processing circuit has been successfully developed. By supplying the power collected from the piezoelectric materials to the switching circuit, the self-powered self-sensing vibration damping system suppress the vibration effectively by controlling the switch which switches turn on a shunt impedance for short periods, in accord with mechanical vibrations. Its effectiveness in the single-mode resonant damping of a steel beam is validated by the experimental results. The experimental results show that 7.89 dB attenuation for the first mode was achieved. The total power dissipation of the control circuit is only 0.322 mW.