Research on Spillover Effects for Vibration Control of Piezoelectric Smart Structures by ANSYS

To control vibration of a piezoelectric smart structure, a controller is usually designed based on a reduced order model (ROM) of the system. When such a ROM based controller operates in closed loop with the actual structure, spillover phenomenon occurs because the unmodeled dynamics, which are not included in ROM, will be excited. In this paper, a new approach aiming at investigating spillover effects in ANSYS software is presented. By using the ANSYS parametric design language (APDL), the ROM based controller is integrated into finite element model to provide an accurate representation of what will happen when the controller is connected to the real plant. Therefore, the issues of spillover effects can be addressed in the closed loop simulation. Numerical examples are presented for investigating spillover effects of a cantilever piezoelectric plate subjected to various types of loading. The importance of considering spillover effects in closed loop simulation of piezoelectric smart structures is demonstrated. Moreover, the present study may provide an efficient method especially beneficial for preliminary design of piezoelectric smart structure to evaluate the performance of candidate control laws in finite element environment considering spillover effects.