An experimental verification of the reduced order transfer function of a piezoelectric laminate beam

Piezoelectric materials are finding increasing applications in active vibration control of structures. A widely used modelling technique for piezoelectric laminates is the assumed modes method which results in an infinite-dimensional model of the composite structure. For control design purposes, such a model is simplified by removing higher frequency modes which lie out of the bandwidth of interest. Truncation can considerably perturb the in-band zeros of the truncated model. The paper suggests a method of minimizing the effect of the removed higher order modes on the low frequency dynamics of the truncated model of a piezoelectric laminated beam by adding a zero frequency term to the low order model of the laminate. Simulations and experimental results are presented