5 - Distributed Transducers for Active Control of Vibration.pdfVIP

5 Distributed Transducers for Active Control of Vibration 5.1 Introduction An important element of any practical control system are the transducers used for implementation of the control. Sensors are needed for measurements which can be used to estimate important disturbance and system variables. Actuators are used to apply control signals to the system in order to change the system response in the required manner. In general sensors provide information to the controller to determine the performance of the control system or to provide control signals related to the system response. Thus sensors and actuators provide the link between the controller and the physical system to be controlled and their design and implementation is of prime importance. In general, control transducers come in three main forms; point transducers, arrays of point transducers or continuously distributed transducers. Each particular format has its advantages and disadvantages and these are outlined in this chapter. Types of actuators range from point force actuators, electrostrictive and piezoelectric distributed actuators, to those based on the materials of shape memory alloy SMA and magnetostrictive systems. The choice of actuator is dependent upon system requirements such as required control authority amount of control force, moment, strain or displacement, etc. , power consumption, frequency response, and physical constraints such as size and mounting requirements, etc. Sensors also range from conventional transducers such as accelerometers, strain gauges and proximity detectors to the systems based on piezoelectric material, optical fibres and shape memory alloy as well as advanced non-contacting sensors such as laser