Investigation of piezoelectric actuator optimal configuration for structural vibration control

This paper presents an investigation of the optimal placement of piezoelectric actuators for the active vibration control of smart structures. Base on the state space equation and the controllability Grammian matrix, a new optimal target is set by the energy efficiency of the input energy. A finite element analysis (FEA) is employed to analyze the configuration of piezoelectric actuators, and then the FEA is combined with the genetic algorithm (GA) for optimal computation. The placements of actuators are defined with binary coding. A piezoelectric plate is simulated to attest the new optimal method and prove its superiority as compared with several other optimal methods.