Abstract
In most structures, fatigue critical areas are associated with regions of high stresses. Sometimes, passive stiffening of structures can displace these high stress regions. Thus, for most applications, active vibration control is preferred. However, the question of whether an active vibration control scheme involving a set of actuators will reduce stresses in the whole structure or create high stress areas in the vicinity of the actuators arises. In previous works, this question has been addressed for cantilever beams which showed that the stresses are reduced by approximately the same order of magnitude as the reduction in vibrations. However, many aerospace structures are constructed of thin walled components whose response to vibration reduction can be very different than that of beams. In this paper, the stresses induced by an active vibration control system, based on the use of an offset piezoceramic stack actuator with acceleration feedback control, are investigated in a plate structure. A 3-D finite element simulation of the closed loop active vibration control system is developed and both the closed loop stresses and vibration amplitude reductions are studied.