Nonlinear semi-passive multimodal vibration damping: An efficient probabilistic approach

This paper deals with the synchronized switch damping (SSD) technique, a semi-passive approach developed to address the problem of structural vibration damping. This technique takes advantage of an original nonlinear processing of the voltage generated by piezoelements. It was shown that the original control law for the SSD technique was optimal in the case of monomodal excitations. In the case of wide band multimodal excitation it is not true anymore. This paper proposes a novel multimodal control law for the SSD technique. It is based on a probabilistic description of the piezovoltage and results in an optimization of the energy dissipated in the nonlinear device connected to the piezoelectric elements.