Avoiding hysteresis in vibration control using piezoelectric laminates

Electric charge is known to naturally reduce the effects of hysteresis in piezoelectric actuators. However little research has been done on the coupling between piezoelectric actuators and highly resonant structures when charge is used to drive the actuator. This lead us to design a feedback charge controller that would reject disturbance vibrations acting on a cantilever beam. We found that the dynamics for the coupled "piezoelectric-beam" system are different depending on whether we use charge or voltage to drive the piezoelectric actuator. Due to this, care must be taken when designing an appropriate charge controller. A solution as well as experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness of this method are included.