An Interface Between Abaqus and Simulink for High-Fidelity Simulations of Smart Structures

This paper presents an interface between Abaqus and Simulink to enable the incorporation of feedback control into high fidelity simulations of smart structures. After the interface is discussed, an example is presented to both demonstrate and validate the simulation framework. The example is a standard one from the field of active vibration control, that of an aluminum beam with a single collocated piezoelectric sensor/actuator pair. A comparison to existing experimental results is shown, and then a nonlinear geometrical simulation is run for when the beam undergoes large deformation to demonstrate the applicability of the method for more general analyses.