Disturbance Rejection Approach to Actuator and Sensor Placement

Abstract

In this note, the use of Hankel singular value (HSV) formula as an actuator placement metric is extended to flexible structures in discrete time. A main novelty introduced is that the ambiguity in the weighting of the principal modes is addressed by incorporating the general disturbance rejection goal into the actuator and sensor placement formulation. Optimal actuator and sensor placement is considered for the purpose of designing control laws for the general disturbance rejection problem. This apparent restriction to disturbance rejection problem is not too restrictive since it is well known from modern multivariable control theory that stability and even robustness requirements can be transformed to this form with appropriate weighting. Simulation results demonstrates that the improvement in closed loop performance is independent of the type of controller used since open loop properties have been improved.