Giant magnetostrictive materials have been available in commercial quantities for over ten years, leading to the design of actuators for industrial and research applications. Magnetostrictive actuators are characterised by their high force capability, large displacements (1200ppm), low volume and operating frequencies up to a few kilohertz. The research has been carried out within a European Brite-Euram project named MADAVIC. It has lead to the realisation of several giant magnetostrictive actuators intended for a number of applications, For ail of them, finite element software developed at the laboratory has been used for magnetic modelling. Characterisation of the actuators has allowed the effects of actuator design trade-offs to be explored in order to determine the optimal configuration for a given specification . . Constructed by METRAVIB-RDS, the prototypes have been tested in terms of dynamic force and displacement in order to obtain a 'figure of merit' for each actuator design, and to better understand the behaviour of the giant magnetostrictive rod at the heart of the system. As with ail transducer materials the non-linear behaviour of magnetostrictive actuators discourages industrialists from using this technology for their applications. To address this problem active vibration control research was undertaken using magnetostrictive actuators. The results obtained demonstrate the capability of this type of actuators for industrial applications
