Electromechanical damping: piezo shunt damping

Purpose and scope

  • Piezo elements used exclusively for structural damping

  • Function:

    • convert mechanical strain energy into electrical energy

    • dissipate energy in passive or semi-passive shunt networks

  • Piezo damping elements are not used as sensors

  • Sensing using piezo surface microphones is handled separately

Piezo damping elements

  • Type:

    • piezo ceramic disks (PZT)

  • Mounting:

    • bonded directly to steel structure

  • Placement strategy:

    • bonded at modal antinodes of the spindle tower

    • placement determined by:

      • modal analysis

      • experimental hammer testing

  • Number:

    • multiple elements distributed over dominant bending modes

  • Explicit locations:

    • spindle tower side plates

  • Not placed on:

    • spindle housing

    • spindle mounting plate

    • non-load-bearing panels

Shunt networks

  • Each piezo element connected to an electrical shunt

  • Shunt types:

    • resistive (R)

    • resistive-inductive (R-L), if required

  • Baseline damping:

    • passive

    • independent of software

  • Failure behavior:

    • defaults to fixed, known-good resistance

Instrumentation of shunts

  • Shunt circuits instrumented with:

    • piezo voltage measurement

    • piezo current measurement

  • ECU computes:

    • instantaneous electrical power

    • averaged dissipated power

  • Power data:

    • logged

    • visualized

    • used for tuning and validation

Adaptive shunt tuning

  • Shunt resistance adjustable via digital potentiometer

  • Tuning strategy:

    • slow supervisory loop

    • time scale: minutes

  • Algorithm characteristics:

    • small bounded resistance steps

    • comparison of dissipated power at neighboring settings

    • hysteresis and min/max limits

  • Purpose:

    • compensate for:

      • temperature changes

      • boundary-condition changes

      • structural aging

  • Adaptive tuning:

    • optional

    • fully disable-able

    • not required for baseline damping

Interaction with other damping strategies

  • Piezo shunt damping complements:

    • structural CLD (carbon fiber)

    • internal damping (epoxy granite)

  • Piezo damping targets:

    • specific structural modes

  • Not intended to:

    • replace passive damping

    • provide active vibration cancellation