抄録
Bending vibration of flexible structures can be suppressed by using piezoelectric elements. A plate type of piezoelectric elements is usually used, and they are attached to the target directly with the adhesive bond. Piezoelectric elements can be used as both actuators and sensors, and it is known that they should be attached to the position where the curvature is large. The efficiency of a piezoelectric element as an electromechanical transducer depends on the curvature. A lot of vibration suppression methods using piezoelectric elements have been proposed thus far. These methods are based on various vibration suppression principles; however, all of their performance is limited by the efficiency of the piezoelectric element. The efficiency can also be enhanced by the size of the piezoelectric element. However, the efficiency is usually insufficient even if the size of the piezoelectric element is large. Therefore the performance of vibration suppression using piezoelectric elements is lower than that of mechanical vibration suppression methods generally. It is necessary to solve this problem so that the vibration suppression techniques using piezoelectric elements yield practical applications. In this paper, a new technique, which enhances the efficiency of piezoelectric elements by using spacers, is proposed. This method is based on the idea that the piezoelectric element should be located optimally not only in horizontal direction but also in perpendicular direction. The optimum height of the spacers is formulated theoretically, and the effectiveness of the proposed method and theoretical analysis is validated through simulations and experiments.
