Vibration suppression in smart structures using fractional order PD controllers

Several important domains, such as the aerospace industry, are confronted with problems related to vibration. The solutions for reducing these vibrations are numerous, but are limited to a large number of passive methods, while the active solutions involve classical and intelligent control techniques. The present paper proposes a fractional order PD controller, for which the control parameters are computed in order to directly limit the vibrations at the resonance frequencies. The case study consists in a beam containing smart sensors and actuators using piezoelectric materials. The simulation results, considering both free and forced vibrations responses of the smart beam, show that the proposed method is simple and leads to an improvement of the closed loop behavior.