Stability of actively controlled rotating shaft made of functionally graded material

In the paper, the problem of active stabilisation of a rotating shaft made of a three-phase Functionally Graded Material (FGM) with piezoelectric fraction is presented. Due to internal friction, at a certain critical rotation speed, the shaft loses its stability and starts to vibrate in a self-excited manner. In the paper, a method protecting the system from such a phenomenon by making use of a FGM controlled by electrodes bonded and embedded in the structure of the shaft is discussed in detail. The critical threshold is found by examination of the eigenvalues corresponding to linear formulas derived via uni-modal Galerkin's discretisation of partial differential equations of motion. The main goal of the paper is determination of such a distribution of the volume fraction of the active phase within the shaft, which makes the system possibly most resistant to self-excitation on the one hand, and still attractive in terms of strength properties on the other. The results are presented in the form of diagrams depicting the critical rotation speed vs. exponents describing volume distribution of the active phase as well as gain factors applied in the control system.