A semi-passive vibration damping system powered by harvested energy

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.