Electroactive Smart Materials: New Challenges for Control

The main objective is to provide an overview of a new class of research problems for the area which is broadly termed smart structures control. We describe electroactive smart materials and focus on control issues which naturally arise. Such materials, typically nano and micro-polymers, have mechanical properties controlled by an electric field. Unlike existing approaches to control such as those based on piezoelectric actuation, electroactive materials do not require electromechanical apparatus for actuation; i.e., they are self-actuating. In addition to basic modelling issues, a challenging paradigm control problem is also formulated: the so-called sustained oscillation problem for an electroactive mass-spring-damper system. For a given electric field E, this formulation leads to a simple nonlinear state equation of the form xdot = A(u)x.