On the theory of multibody mechanisms for elastic bodies with integrated piezoelectric actors and sensors

Efficiency in high speed mechanism can be further increased by use of lightweight construction. But quite often these structures have the drawback of being susceptible to vibrations. This can be overcome by applying the technology of smart structures. Here distributed actuators and sensors made from piezoceramic (PZT) material are capable to actively reduce the unwelcome vibrations if implemented within a control loop. For the optimal design of such kind of mechanism up-to-date simulation tools have to be developed further. To simulate the dynamic behavior of lightweight structures undergoing large motions the multibody approach is a suitable tool. The necessary parameters in the equations of motion for the flexible body can be calculated from the output of a finite element code. The large number of variables from the finite element model have to be reduced to only a few generalized coordinates. Therefore a modal reduction is applied in combination with the introduction of a moving frame of reference. Beyond this technique so called active modes are introduced to represent the impact of the active strain by the PZT patches. These active modes combined with natural modes represent the body deformation within the multibody model.