Optimal Design of Piezoelectric Modal Transducers

Piezoelectric materials are those having the ability to convert electrical energy into mechanical one, and vice versa. Often surface bonded to structures, they are commonly used for sensing, acting and even for reducing noise and structural vibrations as part of active control systems. And, further, they can isolate specific mode shapes of structures when working as spatial filters in the frequency domain (i.e. modal transducers) by shaping properly the piezoelectric layers. This article is intended to revise that concept, initially conceived for beam-type structures only, and explain how it has been extended to plates and shells by means of optimization techniques.