Static Analysis and Displacement Control of a Smart Beam with Weakly Bonded Piezoelectric Actuators

An analytical description of the static characterization of a smart beam with surface-bonded piezoelectric transducers is developed in this paper. The uniform elastic beam is actuated by piezoelectric patches and modeled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam. The static analysis of the intelligent beam is then given in detail based on a transfer matrix method. Furthermore, the actuation mechanism of the piezoelectric patches is also investigated, considering the effects of the interfacial properties between the piezoelectric patches and the host elastic beam. Finally, the control problem of a cantilever beam is studied as the numerical example. To control the displacement at the free end by piezoelectric actuation, an explicit expression reflecting the relation between the external load and electric voltage is derived for this smart beam.