An ASIC-Based Vibration Damping System

We propose an application-specified integrated circuit (ASIC)-based vibration damping system implementing a semiactive controlling method called synchronized switch damping on inductor (SSDI). The ASIC integrates high-voltage switches and diodes for an “energy-extracting” passive LC shunt circuit and a controlling part for synchronous voltage inversion on the piezoelectric transducer. The controlling part has two channels, each including a range-adaptive voltage divider with protection and a peak detector with switch-control output. The system has been tested with both cantilever beam and three-side-clamped-plate structures. Cantilever beam testing shows a 15 dB damping in forced harmonic regime and a fivefold damping rate in pulsed-excitation transient response. For the three-side-clamped-plate case, wideband SSDI damping effects are observed. The damping efficiency for each mode depends on the electromechanical coupling factor and the mapping of the piezoelectric-insert damping zones. It also depends on the excitation level, and begins to increase rapidly with vibration magnitude when the piezoelectric transducer's voltage peaks exceed a certain threshold voltage (~ 0.5 V for the system).