Methodology for Modeling of Passive Shunt Damping of Systems With Bonded Piezocomposites

Abstract

An aluminum cantilever beam bonded with 1-3 piezocomposite dampers is modeled by means of ANSYS finite element and SIMULINK simulation softwares. ANSYS currently cannot account for heat dissipation in piezoelectric materials. As such, ANSYS is used to obtain strain energies to be input into the SIMULINK model to investigate the dynamic behavior of the system and calculate the damping ratio. The impact of two different shunting arrangements, a damper in conjunction with a simple resistive electrical circuit in series and parallel, is investigated. In addition, a simply supported beam and a simply supported straight pipe are also analyzed for their wide applications in industry, and as an indication of the utility of this methodology to analyze complex structural configurations. For a typical cantilever beam, energy dissipation and transient analysis are used to calculate the tip displacement as a function of time and the damping ratio. Then using ANSYS, with the parameter BETAD to incorporate damping as a stiffness multiplier, a comparison of the transient results is used to quantify the damping response of aluminum beams with bonded 1-3 piezocomposite dampers. The system loss factor due to the piezoelectric damping is also compared to the inherent loss factor of different beam materials. The results show that circuits in series provides a better damping ratio (0.000581) as compared to circuits in parallel (0.000374). In addition, for different boundary conditions (cantilever, simply supported), the damping ratios (0.000581, 0.000202) and the BETAD values (6.3 E-6, 0.7 E-6), respectively, are functions of the boundary conditions and are not directly related to each other. Finally, damping using 1-3 piezocomposites effectively increases the overall system loss factor by at least 100% to almost 300% as compared to the inherent material damping. In general, this methodology of combining finite element method (ANSYS) and transient modeling tools (SIMULINK) can be used to study damping characteristics of any structural system damped with 1-3 piezocomposites.