A Case Study in Control Design and Implementation for Flexible Structure Systems

This paper describes a complete case study example, from design to actual implementation, for active vibration control on an experimental flexible structure. The laboratory apparatus consists of a vertical cantilevered beam configuration with a disc at the free end, where the mathematical model developed for control design (reported previously) accounts for dynamics due to the structure and actuators. Several control design approaches have been implemented, including decentralised LQG, overlapping decomposition, and fixed-order dynamic compensation (optimal projection) techniques. Results are presented, and comparisons are made for the various control design methods chosen.