This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 10172, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, and Conference Committee listing.

All structures for which dynamic behaviour is a primary consideration require application of advanced methods of both theoretical and experimental structural dynamics. Specifically, advances in predictive methods of simulation (especially in the numerical analysis aspects) can demand matching advances in testing to provide commensurate accuracy and coverage of the validation of their output. Acquisition of an improved prediction capability is usually accompanied by an increase in expectations and demands for greater reliability in the predicted behaviour. As a direct result, progress in testing and simulation must advance in step and improvements in testing can often be achieved by smarter implementation of contemporary test procedures based on interpretation of the more advanced models used for their design. This lecture presents an integrated test-analysis strategy for ensuring that next-generation structures of all types exhibit much improved reliability in their structural performance.

The problem of free vibration of a linear uniform axial bar, fixed at one end and connected to ground at the other end through a linear viscous damper has been carefully studied by several researchers. It’s known that, for a fixed set of bar parameters and the special case of the damping coefficient λ equal to EA / c (c being the speed of sound in the continuum), no eigenvalues exist. Thus, energy imparted to the bar via harmonic motion of the fixed support will propagate through the bar and be fully dissipated in the damper, in effect making the bar appear to be semi-infinite. I will show some recent results by the present authors in which this phenomenon has been exploited in several other nondispersive media, the taut string and the circular acoustic duct, incorporating viscoelastic supports or absorbers to produce responses to harmonic motion at one or both boundaries that exhibit complete separation of traveling and standing waves, in effect localizing the vibration over a portion of the domain.

Absolute vibration suppression (AVS) is a control method for flexible structures. The first step is an accurate, infinite dimension, transfer function (TF), from actuation to measurement. This leads to the collocated, rate feedback AVS controller that in some cases completely eliminates the vibration. In case of the 1D wave equation, the TF consists of pure time delays and low order rational terms, and the AVS controller is rational. In all other cases, the TF and consequently the controller are fractional order in both the delays and the "rational parts". The paper considers stability, performance and actual implementation in such cases.

Multifunctional smart composites (MSCs) are materials that combine the good electrical and thermal conductivity, high tensile and shear strength, good impact toughness, and high stiffness properties of metals; the light weight and corrosion resistance properties of composites; and the sensing or actuation properties of smart materials. The basic concept for MSCs was first conceived by Daniel Inman and others about 25 years ago. Current laminated carbon and glass fiber polymeric composite materials have high tensile strength and are light in weight, but they still lack good electrical and thermal conductivity, and they are sensitive to delamination. Carbon nanotube yarn and sheets are lightweight, electrically and thermally conductive materials that can be integrated into laminated composite materials to form MSCs. This paper describes the manufacturing of high quality carbon nanotube yarn and sheet used to form MSCs, and integrating the nanotube yarn and sheet into composites at low volume fractions. Various up and coming technical applications of MSCs are discussed including composite toughening for impact and delamination resistance; structural health monitoring; and structural power conduction. The global carbon nanotube overall market size is estimated to grow from $2 Billion in 2015 to $5 Billion by 2020 at a CAGR of 20%. Nanotube yarn and sheet products are predicted to be used in aircraft, wind machines, automobiles, electric machines, textiles, acoustic attenuators, light absorption, electrical wire, sporting equipment, tires, athletic apparel, thermoelectric devices, biomedical devices, lightweight transformers, and electromagnets. In the future, due to the high maximum current density of nanotube conductors, nanotube electromagnetic devices may also become competitive with traditional smart materials in terms of power density.

The electromechanical impedance is a condition-based maintenance (CBM) methodology that uses sensors network to evaluate health condition of mechanical systems. Piezoelectric transducers are used as sensors and actuators to damage detection. Such approach monitors changes in the electric impedance of piezoelectric transducers that are bonded to the host structure. Normally the evaluation of the impedance responses is performed by using damage metrics, which permit to quantify the influence of damage. This is possible since the sensor electrical impedance is directly related to the mechanical impedance of the structure. However, the frequency response functions (FRFs) resulting from this method are susceptible to environmental and operational conditions that must be accounted for in order to avoid false diagnostics. Thus, the aim of this paper relies on the correct detection of incipient faults in rotating shafts under operating condition by using a real-time Impedance-based Structural Health Monitoring (ISHM) method. For this purpose, a data normalization procedure for compensation of changes in environmental and operating conditions is used to minimize changes in impedance signatures resulting from these external influences. Changes on dynamic load result from altering the rotation speed and unbalance level, while temperature changes stem from daily room temperature variations. The compensation technique is based on a hybrid optimization method associated with a given damage metrics. Additionally, a statistical model is used for threshold determination based on the Statistical Process Control (SPC) method. Experimental results show that an incipient damage associated with temperature and dynamic loads effects could be successfully detected with a probability of detection above 95 % confidence for the majority of the sensors used.

Frequency domain modeling has been developed to different engineering applications. In particular, the Spectral Element method (SEM) has been discussed in literature mainly for vibration control design and structural health monitoring once it allows to study unlimited range of frequencies. However, although different authors discuss classical control techniques like PID for SEM formulations there is a limited number of works involving modern control theory based on state space representation. In this context, this work introduces a new approach that allows to use feedback techniques in vibration control design based on SEM. The formulation is presented and numerical simulations are performed using the Timoshenko beam model with two PZT patch bonded. The PZT transducer effects are included too. Results show vibrations reductions of the first three modes of a campled-clamped beam and the proposed approach offers promise to control design using SEM.

This paper presents an overview of impedance-based structural health monitoring, which has been pioneered by Inman and his research group. The basic principle behind this technique is to apply high frequency structural excitations (typically greater than 30 kHz) through the surface-bonded piezoelectric transducers, and measure the impedance of structures by monitoring the current and voltage applied to the piezoelectric transducers. Changes in impedance indicate changes in the structure, which in turn can indicate that damage has occurred. For the last two decades, extensive research works have been performed to various applications, including mechanical, aerospace and civil structural components. The technique has been also extended to piezoelectric sensor diagnostics, concrete cure monitoring, and biomedical applications. This paper presents the summary of how this technique has been evolved with the significant contribution by Inman.

Inflatable space habitats offer many advantages for future space missions; however, the long term integrity of these flexible structures is a major concern in harsh space environments. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of these structures is essential to ensure safe operation, provide early warnings of damage, and measure structural changes over long periods of time. To address this problem, the authors have integrated distributed fiber optic strain sensors to measure loading and to identify the occurrence and location of damage in the straps and webbing used in the structural restraint layer. The fiber optic sensors employed use Rayleigh backscatter combined with optical frequency domain reflectometry to enable measurement of strain every 0.65 mm (0.026 inches) along the sensor. The Kevlar woven straps that were tested exhibited large permanent deformation during initial cycling and continued to exhibit hysteresis thereafter, but there was a consistent linear relationship between the sensor’s measurement and the actual strain applied. Damage was intentionally applied to a tensioned strap, and the distributed strain measurement clearly identified a change in the strain profile centered on the location of the damage. This change in structural health was identified at a loading that was less than half of the ultimate loading that caused a structural failure. This sensing technique will be used to enable integrated SHM sensors to detect loading and damage in future inflatable space habitat structures.

Shape memory alloys (SMAs), due to their ability to repeatably recover substantial deformations under applied mechanical loading, have the potential to impact the aerospace, automotive, biomedical, and energy industries as weight and volume saving replacements for conventional actuators. While numerous applications of SMA actuators have been flight tested and can be found in industrial applications, these actuators are generally limited to non-critical components, are not widely implemented and frequently one-off designs, and are generally overdesigned due to a lack of understanding of the effect of the loading path on the fatigue life and the lack of an accurate method for predicting actuator lifetimes. In recent years, multiple research efforts have increased our understanding of the actuation fatigue process of SMAs. These advances can be utilized to predict the fatigue lives and failure loads in SMA actuators. Additionally, these prediction methods can be implemented in order to intelligently design actuators in accordance with their fatigue and failure limits. In the following paper, both simple and complex thermomechanical loading paths have been considered. Experimental data was utilized from two material systems: equiatomic Nickel-Titanium and Nickelrich Nickel-Titanium.

Gust Load Alleviation (GLA) is an important aspect of flight dynamics and control that reduces structural loadings and enhances ride quality. In conventional GLA systems, the structural response to aerodynamic excitation informs the control scheme. A phase lag, imposed by inertia, between the excitation and the measurement inherently limits the effectiveness of these systems. Hence, direct measurement of the aerodynamic loading can eliminate this lag, providing valuable information for effective GLA system design. Distributed arrays of Artificial Hair Sensors (AHS) are ideal for surface flow measurements that can be used to predict other necessary parameters such as aerodynamic forces, moments, and turbulence. In previous work, the spatially distributed surface flow velocities obtained from an array of artificial hair sensors using a Single-State (or feedforward) Neural Network were found to be effective in estimating the steady aerodynamic parameters such as air speed, angle of attack, lift and moment coefficient. This paper extends the investigation of the same configuration to unsteady force and moment estimation, which is important for active GLA control design. Implementing a Recurrent Neural Network that includes previous-timestep sensor information, the hair sensor array is shown to be capable of capturing gust disturbances with a wide range of periods, reducing predictive error in lift and moment by 68% and 52% respectively. The L2 norms of the first layer of the weight matrices were compared showing a 23% emphasis on prior versus current information. The Recurrent architecture also improves robustness, exhibiting only a 30% increase in predictive error when undertrained as compared to a 170% increase by the Single-State NN. This diverse, localized information can thus be directly implemented into a control scheme that alleviates the gusts without waiting for a structural response or requiring user-intensive sensor calibration.

Recent interests and demands for developing video-rate atomic force microscopes, high-throughput probe-based nanofabrication and high-frequency vibration generator for assisted-machining are increasingly posing new challenges for designing high-bandwidth and large-range piezo-actuated compliant mechanisms. The previous studies mainly focused on making the trade-off between natural frequency and motion range by designing a proper topology. Differing from the previous works, this paper attempts to break the deadlock by employing both piezo-stacks and piezoelectric patches to actuate compliant mechanisms. In this method, piezo-stacks provide an actuating force similar to the traditional way, while piezoelectric patches are bonded on the surface of the flexure arms in compliant mechanisms. These ‘active’ laminaes are used to further actuate the hosting flexural beam by inducing strains on the interface and then give additional bending moments to the flexural arms, which enlarge the output displacement of the compliant mechanism while without the sacrifice of natural frequency. An analytical formulation is established to illustrate the new driving principle and the compound static behaviour of a specific hybrid piezo-actuated multistage compliant mechanism. Initial prototype is also manufactured and experimentally testing is conducted to verify the feasibility of the method.

Most of the ambient energy, which was regarded useless in the past, now is under the spotlight. With the rapid developments on low power electronics, future personal mobile devices and remote sensing systems might become self-powered by scavenging energy in different forms from their surroundings. Kinetic energy is one of the promising energy forms in our living environment, e.g., human motions and vibrations. We have proposed an energy flow to clarify the functions of piezoelectric energy harvesting, dissipation, and their effects on the structural damping of vibrating structures. Impedance modeling and analysis were performed. We have designed an improved self-powered switching interface for piezoelectric energy harvesting circuits. With electromagnetic transduction, we also proposed a knee-mounted energy harvester that could convert the mechanical power from knee joints into electricity during walking. On the other hand, we have developed magnetorheological (MR) fluid devices with multiple functions, including rotary actuators and linear dampers. Multifunctional rotary actuator was designed to integrate motor/generator part and MR fluids into a single device. The actuator could function as motor, generator, clutch and brake, with compact size and good energy efficiency. In addition, novel self-sensing MR dampers with power generation, so as to integrate the dynamic sensing, controllable damping and power generation functions, were developed and investigated. Prototypes were fabricated and tested. The developed actuators were promising for various applications. In this paper, related research in energy harvesting done at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and key results will be presented.

A common application of piezoelectric transducers is to obtain operational data from working structures and dynamic components. Collected data can then be used to evaluate dynamic characterization of the system, perform structural health monitoring, or implement various other assessments. In some applications, piezoelectric transducers are bonded inside the host structure to satisfy system requirements; for example, piezoelectric transducers can be embedded inside the biopolymers of total joint replacements to evaluate the functionality of the artificial joint. The interactions between the piezoelectric device (inhomogeneity) and the surrounding polymer matrix determine the mechanical behavior of the matrix and the electromechanical behavior of the sensor. In this work, an analytical approach is employed to evaluate the electromechanical performance of 2-D plane strain piezoelectric elements of both circular and rectangular-shape inhomogeneities. These piezoelectric elements are embedded inside medical grade ultra-high molecular weight (UHMW) polyethylene, a material commonly used for bearing surfaces of joint replacements, such as total knee replacements (TKRs). Using the famous Eshelby inhomogeneity solution, the stress and electric field inside the circular (elliptical) inhomogeneity is obtained by decoupling the solution into purely elastic and dielectric systems of equations. For rectangular (non-elliptical) inhomogeneities, an approximation method based on the boundary integral function is utilized and the same decoupling method is employed. In order to validate the analytical result, a finite element analysis is performed for both the circular and rectangular inhomogeneities and the error for each case is calculated. For elliptical geometry, the error is less than 1% for stress and electric fields inside and outside the piezoelectric inhomogeneity, whereas, the error for non-elliptical geometry is obtained as 11% and 7% for stress and electric field inside the inhomogeneity, respectively.

Centralized controllers and state estimation strategies are the most common topology implemented for disturbance rejection in smart systems. Although this architecture has been proven to be feasible the advances in computation power and size of logic devices can also enable the implementation of decentralized strategies which, on a large scale, can lead to an overall reliability increase of the system. The goal of this paper is to present this concept within the field of disturbance rejection for smart systems and to explore its capabilities and bottlenecks. A simple example is carried out for a composite plate with two controller/estimator centers. Simulation is used to validate the efficacy of the topology and a design procedure is proposed to guarantee the consensus of the agents within the network.

The research presented in this paper focuses on a unique multifunctional structural design that not only absorbs vibration at desired frequency bands, but also extracts significant amounts of electrical energy. This is accomplished by first designing an array of low-frequency resonators to be integrated into a larger host structure. This array of resonators can contribute not only to static requirements, e.g., stiffness, strength, mass, etc., of the host structure but the array also functions as a distributed system of passive vibration absorbers. Structures having these distributed vibration absorber systems are known as metastructures. Here, the authors present a unique absorber design referred to as a zigzag beam, which can have a natural frequency an order of magnitude lower than that of a basic cantilever beam of the same scale. It will be shown that the zigzag beams can be designed with an added layer of piezoelectric material, which allows them to harvest significant amounts of electrical power as they suppress vibration of the host structure. This paper includes details of the fully-coupled electromechanical analytical and numerical models for energy harvesting metastructures. Experimental results used to validate the proposed modeling methods will be discussed. Lastly, results of a multi-objective design optimization will be presented and discussed. Results of the optimization study were able to show that allowing only an 82 % increase in the host structure vibration could yield more than a 1500 % increase in total power output. Other results show that the power output (or absorber motion) could be increased 241% without increasing host structure vibrations due to multiple design solutions existing at fixed host structure vibration levels.

Fiber reinforced polymer composites are becoming ubiquitous in modern structures, due to their light weight, high specific strength, and ability to be tailored for a specific application. The increase in the commercial adoption and feasible applications of composite materials has motivated researchers to develop the next generation of composites. These next generation composites aim to integrate more structural and nonstructural properties into the structure with the goal of increasing the efficiency of the system as a whole. There have been many efforts in modifying or replacing structural fiber and matrix phases with active materials. However, this methodology usually affects the structural properties of the composite and limits their practical applications. Here, we present a new approach for the development of multifunctional fiber reinforced polymer composites. In this method, piezoelectric nanostructures (ZnO nanowires and barium titanate textured films) are integrated at the interface between structural fibers and matrix phase. Since the load transfer between reinforcement phase and polymer matrix happens at the interfacial region, the active phase at the interface results in a composite with unique properties. In this study we examined the vibration damping and energy harvesting of the fabricated composites. The nanostructured interface showed a great potential as a damping mechanism and energy harvesting constituent in these composites. The large amount of stress concentration in this region resulted in increased damping properties and sustainable energy harvesting performance. This research introduces a route for integrating responsive properties into structural composites by utilizing functional nanostructured interfaces.