Purely electrical damping of vibrations in arbitrary PEM plates: a mixed non-conforming FEM-Runge-Kutta time evolution analysis

A new numerical code, based upon a mixed FEM-Runge-Kutta method, is used for the analysis and design of plane 2-D smart structures. The code is applied to the study of arbitrarily shaped PEM plates, based on a weak formulation of their governing equations, [17]. The optimal parameters needed to synthesize appropriate electric networks are computed, and the overall performances of such plates are investigated. Two examples are studied: firstly, a simple case is used to test the main features of the code; secondly, a more complex PEM plate is designed and analyzed by means of the proposed numerical approach.