Piezoelectric plates distribution for active control of torsional vibrations

The active vibration control systems have received considerable attention in various areas of mechanical engineering. The advent of smart materials has significantly increased the available solutions for engineers in this field. Among these, piezoelectric materials are among the most promising ones but their placement is an important parameter for their efficiency. The optimal placement to damp the flexural modes is a topic widely studied in the literature but this is not for the torsional modes. In this paper a new analytical method to find the optimal placement of piezoelectric plates to control the multimode torsional vibrations of a cantilever beam is proposed. The results are compared with those obtained by a finite element code with a very good agreement.