Vibration suppression of laminated composite beams using actuators of giant magnetostrictive materials

This paper presents a simulation of vibration suppression of a laminated composite beam embedded with actuators of a giant magnetostrictive material subjected to control magnetic fields. It has been found that the strains generated in the material are not only significantly larger than ones created by many other smart materials but also exhibit some inherent nonlinearities. To utilize the full potential of these materials in active vibration control, these nonlinearities should be characterized in the control system as accurately as possible. In this simulation of nonlinear dynamic controls, the control law with negative velocity feedback and the analytical nonlinear constitutive model of the magnetostrictive layer are employed. The numerical results show that this proposed approach is efficient not only in a linear zone but also in nonlinear zones (dead zone and saturation zone) of magnetostrictive curves in vibration suppression. Compared with those from the control system based on the linear constitutive relations of the material, it is found that the simulation results based on the linear model are efficient only when the magnetostrictive relations are located in the linear zone. Once the system has some departure from the linear zone, however, the results from the linear model become unacceptable. Finally, the effect of material properties, lamination schemes and location of the magnetostrictive layers on vibration suppression of the practical system is evaluated.