Interaction of multiple actuators for synchronized switching damping control

The semi-active Synchronized Switching Damping (SSD) family is based on a nonlinear shunting circuit applied to piezoelectric actuators, where the circuit characteristics are switched along the vibration cycles of the structure. SSD offers many advantages with respect to other vibration suppression techniques using piezoelectric actuators. Indeed, multiple modes can be suppressed with a relatively simple system and with very low power consumption. This allows the realization of self-powered control systems, without the need of wiring and external power supply. Moreover, the characteristics of this control strategy make it very robust to the variation of the dynamic characteristics of the structure, outperforming the classic passive linear shunts. Different SSD techniques have been developed, varying the circuit characteristics and the switching logic. Although this control family has been studied for many years, all the works are limited to the single actuator case, losing in generality with respect to many practical cases. For this reason, the aim of this work is to apply SSD control with multiple actuators and to study the interaction of the actuators and their shunting circuits in order to optimize the damping performance. The study will be performed numerically and then an experimental setup will be realized to test the proposed solutions.