Vibration Control of Smart Flexible Structures Using ER Fluids

초록

This paper provides vibration control of smart flexible structures filled with an electrorheological (ER) fluid. Firstly, a field-dependent complex shear modulus of the employed ER fluid itself is distilled through an oscillatory test. A dynamic model of the smart structures is then developed by incorporating the measured modulus with conventional sandwich structure theory and finite element method (FEM). Moreover, two smart structures of a cantileverd beam and a rectangular plate are constructed by inserting the ER fluid. As for the smart beam, a control scheme to actively suppress tip deflection under variable excitation is formulated on the basis of the predicted field-demonstrated in both the frequency and time domains. As for the smart plate structure partitioned into four ER fluid-filled sections, an extensie modal test is empirically conducted to identify natural frequencies and mode shapes with respect to both the magnitude and the area of the applied electric fields to the ER fluid domains. In order to evaluate the proposed methodology, globally and locally controlled mode shapes and natural frequencies form the experimental implementation are compared with ones predicted form the dynamic model with FEM. The results exhibit that the proposed smart structures with the ER fluid have a great authority in tuning structural behaviors and elastodynamic properties.