Design and evaluation of a shunted flexible piezoelectric damper for vibration control of cable structures

In this work a shunted flexible piezoelectric damping system is designed and numerically evaluated for the purpose of vibration attenuation of large deployable space cable structures. We propose a design of a tube-shaped flexible piezoelectric energy absorber consisting of multilayered PVDF sectors, which could be shunted with two types of passive electric circuits, i.e. the series resistance-inductance (LR) shunt and the series resistance-negative capacitance (NC-R) shunt. The compatible stiffness of the PVDF tube ensures an effective transformation of deformation from the vibrating cable to the energy absorber. For best performance we carried out optimization on the geometric parameters of the PVDF tube. By analysis we found that the optimal thickness of the PVDF tube is roughly 0.4 times of the inner tube radius. We optimized the shunt circuits and selected the appropriate distribution position of the damper in the flexible cable structures. The performance of the design was numerically evaluated based on three problems, namely the longitudinal vibration of a single-cable structure, the transverse vibration of a single-cable structure and the vibration of a cross-cable structure. Based on the results, we confirm the remarkable performance of the design. Being highly frequency dependent, the design with the LR shunt only works for one deformation mode at a time, e.g., bending or stretching. In contrast, the design with the NC-R shunt works for both modes as it has a much wider frequency band. The design with the LR shunt has better performance than the NC-R shunt when dealing with the stretching deformation mode only. For vibration with combined stretching and bending, however, the performance of both designs is equally good. This is because the NC-R shunt can work for both deformation modes simultaneously, and hence it shows great adaptability and application potential in vibration control of complex flexible space structures.