Experimental Verification of Various Modelling Techniques for Piezoelectric Actuated Panels

The scientific equipment being used on-board satellites sometimes requires a high degree of pointing accuracy and a minimum level of disturbances i.e. vibrations. To this end, actively controlled structures are employed and one of the best methods of achieving this degree of control with the minimum of impact on the structure itself is to employ piezoelectric patches as sensors/actuators. In this paper, various techniques for the mathematical modelling of the dynamics of a piezoelectric actuated panel are presented. The results obtained via the numerical simulations are then compared with test results in order to assess the accuracy of the various modelling techniques. Attention is focused on a simply supported panel, with twin patches of piezoelectric material bonded on opposite faces of the panel, which act as actuators. The equations governing the dynamics of the system, which includes the panel and the actuators driven by electrical signals, are derived using Lagrange’s equations of motion with vibration mode shapes of the bare panel as the Ritz functions. Other techniques, such as Mechanical Impedance based method and Finite Element method are also used to produce mathematical models of the system.