Piezoelectric self sensing actuators for high voltage excitation

Self sensing techniques allow the use of a piezoelectric transducer simultaneously as an actuator and as a sensor. Such techniques are based on knowledge of the transducer behaviour and on measurements of electrical quantities, in particular voltage and charge. Past research work has mainly considered the linear behaviour of piezoelectric transducers, consequently restricting the operating driving voltages to low values. In this work a new self sensing technique is proposed which is able to perform self sensing reconstruction both at low and at high driving voltages. This technique, in fact, makes use of a hysteretic model to describe the nonlinear piezoelectric capacitance necessary for self sensing reconstruction. The capacitance can be measured and identified at the antiresonances of a vibrating structure with a good approximation. After providing a mathematical background to deal with the main aspects of self sensing, this technique is compared theoretically and experimentally to a typical linear one by using an aluminum plate with one bonded self sensing transducer and a positive position feedback (PPF) controller to verify the performance in self sensing based vibration control.