Artificial neural networks have been widely used in many studies, such as the prediction of the piezoelectric effect of the plate of engineering structures in vibration and noise reduction. In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) model was employed to explore the piezoelectric patch size and thickness's effect on the first order natural frequency and displacement amplitude of a plate. With the finite element method (FEM), a rectangular plate actuated by a piezoelectric patch was analyzed with various patch sizes. The FEM data was later used to build an ANN model. The dynamic response of the plate was predicted by the ANN model and validated with FEM in terms of 1st order natural frequency and displacement amplitude. Results from case studies showed that with the input of patch length, width and thickness, ANN model can accurately predict both natural frequency and displacement amplitude. When the input of ANN model was simplified to patch size and thickness or the volume of the patch, the accuracy became worse and worse. The influence of the patch size and thickness on the first order natural frequency was coupled and the maximal and minimal values were predicted based on the ANN model.
Keywords: active actuating; neural network; piezoelectric effect; rectangular plate; size effect.