A digital approach to the disturbance-accommodation problem

Abstract

In this paper, the work of Burdess and Metcalfe (1985) on the active control of forced vibrations in mechanical systems is extended to the disturbance-accommodation problem. The topic is treated from the digital systems point of view and an a priori control action is included with an improved disturbance estimator. The idea of a modified disturbance observer is proposed to show how an estimate of the excitation can be derived and is used to generate part of the control action. In order to allow a predefined state trajectory to be followed, an a priori control action is proposed. The resulting compensator does not require any knowledge of the disturbance model, the underlying concept consisting of estimating the disturbance instantaneously. Experimental results are presented to show the performance of the method proposed with different types of dis turbances acting on the system considered.