“…The piezoelectric patches transform mechanical energy of the vibrating structure into electrical energy, which is then dissipated into the form of Joule heat to provide electrical damping to the structure by the shunt circuits. Several shunt circuits can be considered: the classical R-and RL-shunts, proposed by Hagood and Von Flotow [3], improvements of those techniques, by the use of several piezoelectric elements [4,5,6], active fiber composites [7] or adaptive shunts [8], and recently semi-passive techniques, commonly known as switch techniques [9,10,11]. Since those techniques are passive (or semi-passive if some electronic components have to be powered), a critical issue is that their performances, in terms of damping efficiency, directly depend on the electromechanical coupling between the host structure and the piezoelectric elements, which has to be maximized.…”