Piezoelectric-based vibration control system for solar panels

Here, an active vibration suppression method was proposed for flexible solar panels with first-order frequency less than 1 Hz. With this method, piezoelectric elements were employed and integrated into a solar panel as sensors and actuators. However, with decrease in the first-order frequency, the collocated control might cause unreal suppressions. To avoid unreal suppressions, both the measurement from sensors and the vibration of a point on the panel were taken into account in designing the positive position feedback (PPF) controller. The proposed method was validated with simulations based on Simulink and Adams. Results showed the effectiveness on vibration suppression of the whole panel.