  Two-dimensional thin plates are widely used in many applications. Shunt
damping is a promising way for the attenuation of vibration of these
electromechanical systems. It enables a compact vibration damping method
without adding significant mass and volumetric occupancy. Analyzing the
dynamics of such electromechanical systems requires precise modeling tools that
properly consider the coupling between the piezoelectric elements and the host
structure. Although the concept of shunt damping has been studied extensively
in the literature, most of the studies do not provide a formulation for
modeling the multiple piezoelectric patches that are scattered on the host
structure and shunted separately. This paper presents a methodology and a
formulation for separately shunted piezoelectric patches for achieving higher
performance on vibration attenuation. The Rayleigh-Ritz method is used for
performing modal analysis and obtaining the frequency response functions of the
electro-mechanical system. The developed model includes mass and stiffness
contribution of the piezoelectric patches as well as the electromechanical
coupling effect. In this study, the piezoelectric patches are shunted via
separate electrical circuits and compared with the ones those are shunted via
interconnected electrical circuits. For verification, system-level finite
element simulations are performed in ANSYS software and compared with the
analytical model results. An experimental setup is also built to validate the
performance of the separately shunted piezoelectric patches. The effectiveness
of the method is investigated for a broader range of frequencies and it was
shown that separately shunted piezoelectric patches are more effective compared
to connected for a wide range of frequencies.
