Resonant control of structural vibration using charge-driven piezoelectric actuators

Driving piezoelectric actuators by charge, or current rather than voltage is known to significantly reduce the hysteretic nature of these actuators. Although this feature of piezoelectric transducers has been known to the researchers for some time, still voltage amplifiers are being used as the main driving mechanism for piezoelectric devices. This is due to the perceived difficulty in building charge/current amplifiers capable of driving highly capacitive loads such as piezoelectric actuators. Recently, a new charge amplifier has been proposed which is ideal for driving piezoelectric loads used in applications such as active damping of vibration. Consequently, it is now possible to effectively, and accurately control the charge deposited on the electrodes of a piezoelectric transducer, and thereby avoid hysteresis altogether. This paper further investigates properties of piezoelectric transducers driven by charge sources when used with resonant controllers for structural vibration control applications. The paper reports experimental results of a multivariable resonant controller implemented on a piezoelectric laminate cantilever beam.