To add damping to structures, viscoelastic materials (VEM) are added to structures. In order to enhance the damping effect of the VEM, a constraining layer is attached, creating a passive constrained layer damping treatment (PCLD). When this constraining layer is an active element, the treatment is called active constrained layer damping (ACLD). Recently, the investigation of ACLD treatments has shown it to be an effective method of vibration suppression. In this work, two new hybrid configurations are introduced by separating the passive and active elements. In the first variation, the active and passive element are constrained to the same side of the beam. The other variation allows one of the treatments to be placed on the opposite side of the beam. A comparison will be made with pure active, PCLD, ACLD and a variation which places the active element underneath PCLD. Energy methods and Lagrange's equation are used to obtain equations of motion, which are discretized using assumed modes method. The frequency dependent damping is modeled using the Golla-Hughes-McTavish (GHM) method and the system is analyzed in the time domain. GHM increases the size of the original system by adding fictitious dissipation coordinates that account for the frequency dependent damping. An internally balanced model reduction method is used to reduce the equations of motion to their original size. A linear quadratic regulator and output feedback are used to actively control vibration. The length and placement of treatment is optimized using different criteria. It is shown that placing the active element on the opposite side of the passive element is capable of vibration suppression with lower control effort and more inherent damping. If the opposite surface is not available for treatment, a suitable alternative places the PZT underneath the PCLD. LQR provides the best control, since it assumes all states are available for feedback. Usually only select states are available and output feedback is used. It is shown that output feedback, while not as effective as full state feedback, is still able to damp vibration. / Ph. D.

Josephson junction qubits are promising candidates for a scalable quantum processor. Such qubits are commonly manipulated by means of sequences of rf-pulses and different methods are used to determine their quantum state. The readout should be able to distinguish the two qubit states with high accuracy and be faster than the relaxation time of the qubit. We discuss and experiment with a readout method based on the switching of a Josephson junction from the zero voltage state to a finite voltage state. The Josephson junction circuit has a non-linear dynamics and when it is brought to a bifurcation point, it can be made arbitrarily sensitive to small perturbations. This extreme sensitivity at a bifurcation point can be used to distinguish the two quantum states if the topology of the phase space of the circuit leads to a quick separation into the final states where re-crossings of the bifurcation point are negligible. We optimize a switching current detector by analyzing the phase space of a Josephson junction circuit with frequency dependent damping. A pulse and hold technique is used where an initial current pulse brings the junction close to its bifurcation point and the subsequent hold level is used to give the circuit enough time to evolve until the two states can be distinguished by the measuring instrument. We generate the pulse and hold waveform by a new technique where a voltage step with following linear voltage rise is applied to a bias capacitor. The frequency dependent damping is realized by an on-chip RC-environment fabricated with optical lithography. Josephson junction circuits are added on by means of e-beam lithography. Measurements show that switching currents can be detected with pulses as short as 5 ns and a resolution of 2.5% for a sample directly connected to the measurement leads of the cryostat. Detailed analysis of the switching currents in the RC-environment show that pulses with a duration of 20 us can be explained by a generalization of Kramers' escape theory, whereas switching the same sample with 25 ns pulses occurs out of thermal equilibrium, with sensitivity and speed adequate for qubit readout. / QC 20100924