A self-powered piezoelectric vibration control system with switch pre-charged inductor (SPCI) method

A self-powered piezoelectric vibration control system is proposed and investigated for flexible structures in this paper. The objective of the system is to minimize the vibration of the flexible structure and at the same time to harvest energy for the self-powered control implementation. The whole system is comprised of four parts, i.e., flexible-beam mechanism, H₂ control algorithm, switch pre-charged inductor (SPCI) based control implementation, and energy storage unit. A cantilever beam with a tip mass, which is a typical type of flexible structures, is partly covered by a PZT film at the fixed end. The output feedback H₂ control algorithm produces desired values of control voltage. The circuit part uses a novel SPCI technique to realize the desired control voltage. The energy storage unit has both functions of accumulating energy and providing electricity needed in the control. Theoretical analysis and simulation are carried out. The simulation results show that the vibration of the cantilever beam can be effectively reduced under white-noise random excitation. It also indicates that the accumulated harvested energy is more than the consumed energy in the system.