Abstract
Abstract Telescope mirrors—like every rigid body—have six degrees of freedom (DOFs) to move: translation along three axes of space and rotation around these three axes. Hydraulic support systems, which are designed to hold the mirror in the required best optical shape, have to couple all six DOFs between the mirror and its supporting cell structure. While three DOFs are covered by the axial support system and two DOFs by the lateral support system, the last degree of freedom often remains uncovered. A good example is the lateral support system for the 8 m primary mirror of ESO's Very Large Telescope, which did not couple movements along the horizontal axis between the mirror and its cell and therefore required a lateral restraining device. Based on this example, a general method is shown how to control all degrees of freedom at a given supporting force distribution without any unwanted additional forces. According to the theory of modal control, a hydraulic network is used to decouple the oil flow to the hydraulic actuators and thereby to control the components of the supporting forces independently. The theory may be applied for other hydraulic support systems, too.
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