Wireless actuation characteristics and modal control effectiveness of segmented photostrictive actuators

Abstract

Photostrictive materials, such as PLZT, which have the ability to convert high-energy light into mechanical motion, are emerging as new actuation materials. In contrast to the conventional transducers, photostrictive materials can produce actuation strains resulting from irradiation from certain wavelength light, which are immune from the electromagnetic interferences. And this photo-driven process is the photodeformation effect. In this paper, characteristics of the photodeformation effect are calibrated. The light intensity, the temperature and the voltage leakage's influences to the characteristics of the photostrictive actuator are also evaluated. Since actuator's location is one of the critical issues to decide the structural vibration control effectiveness, the modal control action and optimization of actuator placement for distributed control of a hybrid patched optical actuator/beam is investigated. An effective method to achieve the best vibration control is inferred from the parametric study.