Vibration control and energy harvesting using smart materials

When engineers or scientists use the prefix "smart" they are talking about a system that seems to be able to respond automatically to changes in its surroundings like a living thing. So smart materials are those that alter their shape, stiffness or other properties when they are subjected to changes in temperature, electrical or magnetic field. By utilizing these adaptive features, smart materials can be built as sensors and actuators. Integrating with controllers, such systems perform work like nerves, muscles, and brains in our human bodies. Smart materials are being increasingly used for suppression of vibration in helicopter rotor blades, noise attenuation for submarines, ride comfort improvement for automobiles, health monitoring and control of civil structures, and various medical applications. This seminar will introduce the basic characteristics of smart materials such as piezoelectric materials and magneto-rheological (MR) fluids as the elements in intelligent systems. The fundamental concepts of several smart material technologies such as piezoelectric energy harvesting from vibration, active-passive hybrid vibration control, and semi-active control via MR fluid dampers will be presented. Some key results regarding design and fabrication of smart devices, analysis and implementation of integrated systems will be shown. Their potential applications to automobiles and trains, computer hard disk drives, wireless health monitoring of bridges, and medical devices will also be discussed.