Purely electrical damping of vibrations in arbitrary PEM plates: a mixed non-conforming FEM-Runge-Kutta time evolution analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel mixed FEM-Runge-Kutta numerical method for analyzing and designing electrically damped PEM plates, enabling precise control of vibrations in arbitrary 2-D smart structures.

Contribution

It presents a new numerical code combining FEM and Runge-Kutta methods for the analysis and design of arbitrary-shaped PEM plates with electrical damping capabilities.

Findings

Validated the numerical code with simple test case

Successfully designed and analyzed a complex PEM plate

Demonstrated effective vibration damping through electrical network optimization

Abstract

A new numerical code, based upon a mixed FEM-Runge-Kutta method, is used for the analysis and design of plane 2-D smart structures. The code is applied to the study of arbitrarily shaped PEM plates, based on a weak formulation of their governing equations, [17]. The optimal parameters needed to synthesize appropriate electric networks are computed, and the overall performances of such plates are investigated. Two examples are studied: firstly, a simple case is used to test the main features of the code; secondly, a more complex PEM plate is designed and analyzed by means of the proposed numerical approach.