Vibration control with electromagnetic and piezoelectric time-varying vibration absorbers: a comparative experimental study

This paper presents initial experimental results on the practical implementation of time-varying semi-active electromechanical units to control the low frequency vibrations of flexible structures excited by stationary stochastic disturbances. Two types of control units are considered: first, electromagnetic and second, piezoelectric transducers. The two electromechanical vibration absorbers are connected to time-varying electrical shunt circuits. The study shows that the proposed semi-active sweeping electromechanical vibration absorbers effectively reduce the vibration level of the structures over the range of frequency considered and without the need of a precise tuning, which would require an accurate system identification. This is a rather interesting result since it suggests that the two semi-active control systems can effectively work under changes of the physical properties of the host structure.