Experimental Investigation of Control Logic for State-Switched Dampers

Recently, significant interest has been generated by the possibilities of active vibration control through the implementation of state switching, or piezoceramic shunting. A state-switched absorber (SSA) is a vibration absorber that has the unique ability to change its resonant state amongst multiple distinct resonant states while in motion, thereby increasing the effective bandwidth over that of a single frequency device and allowing control of multi-frequency and transient disturbances. In contrast, a switch-shunted damper (SSD) is a variant of an SSA that is used to increase the damping of the structure to which the damper is applied. A prototype SSD has been built and tested to experimentally investigate switching control logic. For this prototype, the results indicate that switching states at a condition of maximum strain yields enhanced damping effectiveness but also leads to the generation of potentially undesirable mechanical transients.