Controller design for a large space structure test facility using experimental frequency response data

The results of the application of modern robust control design techniques have been disappointing. This is particularly true for applications involving flexible structures due to the conservatism inherent in assuming the presence of unstructured model uncertainty. It has been observed that models for such systems derived from finite element approaches exhibit highly structured uncertainty. This paper demonstrates that numerical techniques for controller design can be used in conjunction with experimental frequency response data to design effective controllers for flexible systems. Test results are presented for a reduced order controller which achieves significant damping improvement for a large space structure (LSS) test article