H∞ controllers for the rejection of microvibration disturbances

The suppression of microvibrations (low amplitude vibrations with frequencies in the range 1 to 1000 Hz) is becoming increasingly important in spacecraft and other applications and can only be achieved (in most cases) by active feedback control schemes. This paper describes a Lagrange-Rayleigh-Ritz method which has been used to develop a state space description of the generic case of a vibrating panel with piezo-electric patches as actuators and sensors, disturbances, and a payload. The resulting models are used here to design H_∞ based active feedback control schemes for disturbance attenuation.