Experimental study on the electromechanical hysteresis property of macro fiber composite actuator

The hysteresis characteristic in macro fibre composite (MFC) actuator is intimately related to their application in vibration control system. In this paper, the electromechanical hysteresis property of MFC actuator is studied. First, experimental study on the electromechanical behaviours under different voltages and frequencies is carried out, and the hysteretic property of MFC actuator is investigated. A digital signal processing (DSP) system is used to control input voltage and a digital image correlation (DIC) system as noncontact setup is used to obtain the output strain of the MFC actuator in the experiment. The experimental results indicate that the relationship of the voltage and strain displays hysteresis with nonlocal memory. Second, the Preisach model is used to describe hysteresis characteristic of the MFC actuator. In order to improve the accuracy of the model, the modifications are made, in which the experimental data under the quasi-static frequency range and the congruency property are used to establish the modified Preisach model. Finally, the hysteresis characteristics of the MFC actuator predicted from the proposed model are compared with those obtained from the classical Preisach model. The results indicate that the proposed model gives better accuracy than the classical Preisach model, and it is suggested that the present study on the hysteresis model of the MFC actuator can be used in the active vibration control.