A Simulink Platform for the Design of Adaptive TVA

This paper presents a SIMULINK platform that has been developed to study the vibration response of flexible distributed structures equipped with adaptive Tunable Vibration Absorbers. The platform has been conceived specifically to design adaptive algorithms that optimally tune the vibration absorbers either to control the resonant response of a target flexural mode of the hosting structure excited by a broadband disturbance or to control the time-harmonic flexural response of the hosting structure subject to a tonal excitation. The platform can work on simple hosting structures whose modal response can be derived from analytical formulae as well as structures with complex geometries, whose modal response can be either derived numerically using finite element methods or measured with distributed (e.g. laser vibrometer, video cameras) or point (accelerometers) sensors. The platform works in the time-domain and can be used to investigate the stability and convergence properties of the tuning algorithms. Also, it provides models for simple mass-spring-damper vibration absorbers as well as for electro-mechanical absorbers or vacuum controlled absorbers. Simple tuning algorithms based on phase considerations of the absorber vibration response as well as more advanced algorithms based on energy cost functions can be investigated.