Effect of piezoelectric actuator placement on controlling the modes of vibration for flexible structures

Vibration control is a large area of interest either in all sections of industry or in research. One way to control the vibration of dynamic systems is by using piezoelectric materials (PZT's). PZT's have been used to reduce vibration in both active and passive control systems and that is due to their special characteristics. In this work, the effect of the PZT actuator location on controlling the vibrations is studied. Two structures are used in the study, a 2-D beam and a 3-D plate with two different control techniques, an LQR controller and an LQG controller. The modeling is done using the well known finite element method. Results were found by simulating the cases in MATLAB. Validation of the results is done in ANSYS.