Piezoelectric Subordinate Oscillator Arrays: Performance Recovery and Robustness to Uncertainty

Abstract

Abstract Prior work demonstrates that an attached subordinate oscillator array (SOA) can attenuate vibration of a host structure. The distribution of masses and stiffnesses of the attached oscillators can craft a flat frequency response over a desired band. This response modification can be a significant improvement over classical dynamic vibration absorbers (DVA) that attenuate response at one target frequency while increasing the frequency response amplitude at nearby side frequencies. Performance of the SOA can be highly sensitive to the uncertainty or disorder in the mechanical properties of the system. This paper shows that use of piezolectric SOAs (PSOAs) has the potential to address and ameliorate such sensitivity to off-design situations. It is important to note that the design strategy is simple and effective: it can be carried out without optimization techniques by choosing simple or well-known distributions of electromechanical properties.