Control of Mechanical Structures by Piezoelectric Actuators and Sensors

Smart structures based on piezoelectricity represent an important new group of actuators and sensors for active vibration control systems. This technology allows to construct spatially distributed devices. Since the design of the spatially distributed sensors and actutators becomes part of the controller design, special designmethods for the controllers are required. Several well established approaches like PD-, H2- und Hinf-design are adapted to solve this problem. They are based on infinite dimensional Lagrangian systems in conjunction with collocated actutator and sensor paring. Finally, applications to beams and plates demonstrate the power and effectiveness of the proposed methods.