Abstract: An experimental work is conducted on a leaf spring which acts as cantilever smart beam with & without PZT patches, by interfacing the experimental setup. The free vibration of the mild steel, aluminium and GFRP composite beams were carried out by varying the initial displacement and then surface bonded piezoelectric i.e. Lead Zirconium Titanate PZT patches to counteract the vibration levels. An input voltage applied to the PZT in order to find out the settling time and the damping factor of the beams. The first four modes of the natural frequency of smart beams is determined at different position of an actuator from the fixed end of the structure, which are very close to the natural frequency determine by analytical method. There is increase in mass and stiffness of an experimental material, due to addition of the PZT patch on the surface of beam, which results in changes of its natural frequency. The optimization location or position of PZT on the surface is at center of beam length. The leaf spring vibrations signal were collected through a data acquisition system (FFT Analyzer) supported by OROS OX-3 series software. From collected data, post analysis was done and followed by simulation of results with the help of MAT lab software.

Keywords: Leaf spring, Active Vibration, Accelerometer, FFT Analyzer, Lead-Zirconium-Titanate-PZT actuator.