Topology optimization of piezoelectric bi-material actuators with velocity feedback control

Abstract

In recent years, the new technologies and discoveries on manufacturing materials have encouraged researchers to investigate the appearance of material properties that are not naturally available. Materials featuring a specific stiffness, or structures that combine non-structural and structural functions are applied in the aerospace, electronics and medical industry fields. Particularly, structures designed for dynamic actuation with reduced vibration response are the focus of this work. The bi-material and multifunctional concepts are considered for the design of a controlled piezoelectric actuator with vibration suppression by means of the topology optimization method (TOM). The bi-material piezoelectric actuator (BPEA) has its metallic host layer designed by the TOM, which defines the structural function, and the electric function is given by two piezo-ceramic layers that act as a sensor and an actuator coupled with a constant gain active velocity feedback control (AVFC). The AVFC, provided by the piezoelectric layers, affects the structural damping of the system through the velocity state variables readings in time domain. The dynamic equation analyzed throughout the optimization procedure is fully elaborated and implemented. The dynamic response for the rectangular four-noded finite element analysis is obtained by the Newmark's time-integration method, which is applied to the physical and the adjoint systems, given that the adjoint formulation is needed for the sensitivity analysis. A gradient-based optimization method is applied to minimize the displacement energy output measured at a predefined degree-of-freedom of the BPEA when a transient mechanical load is applied. Results are obtained for different control gain values to evaluate their influence on the final topology.

2D topology optimization MATLAB codes for piezoelectric actuators and energy harvesters

“…There are several approaches for topology optimization method (Maute and Sigmund 2013). However, the density-based approach is chosen for this paper since its efficiency is already established in many researches specially in the area of piezoelectric actuators (Kögl and Silva 2005;Ruiz et al 2017;Moretti and Silva 2019) or energy harvesters (Homayouni-Amlashi 2019; Zheng et al 2009;Noh and Yoon 2012).…”

“…Afterwards, other approaches including SIMP (Kögl and Silva 2005), BESO (de Almeida 2019) or level set method (Chen et al 2010) are also explored. By defining proper objective functions, TO methodology is applied to piezoelectric actuators (Moretti and Silva 2019;Gonċalves et al 2018), sensors (Menuzzi et al 2018) and energy harvesters (Homayouni-Amlashi et al 2020b;Homayouni-Amlashi 2019;Townsend et al 2019). The publications considered different types of system modeling including the static (Zheng et al 2009), dynamic (Noh and Yoon 2012;Wein et al 2009), modal (Wang et al 2017) and electrical circuit coupling (Salas et al 2018;Rupp et al 2009).…”

Review on the use of piezoelectric materials for active vibration, noise, and flow control

“…In other studies, topology optimization has been employed designing piezoelectric actuators for the LQR controlled vibration attenuation in plates [79] and laminated composite structures [80,81], AVC of transient of thin shell structures [82], and elastic wave propagation control, and low frequency AVC of the phononic metamaterials [83]. Moretti et al applied topology optimization procedure for designing a flextensional piezoelectric actuator [84] and bi-material piezoelectric actuator [85]; both of the studies targeted optimal design for active vibration suppression.…”

Optimisation of a Multi-Functional Piezoelectric Component for a Climbing Robot

“…There is also a growing body of research relating to the topology optimisation of piezoelectric devices and components. The majority of this work relates to optimising piezoelectric actuators or energy harvesting devices [ 6 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. The design of piezoelectric sensors has also been considered, particularly the design of layered piezoelectric sensors with a view to optimising their dynamic vibration response [ 20 , 23 , 27 ].…”