Enhanced active constrained layer damping (ACLD) treatment using stand-off-layer: robust controllers design, experimental implementation and comparison

Abstract

It is a well known fact that system parameters of flexible structures keep on changing because of several reasons. Ordinary controllers lose their effectiveness in changed situations and do not guarantee the stability of the closed loop (CL) system. However, controllers designed based on robust control theory not only maintain the CL stability of the perturbed system for a large variation in system parameters but also maintain best performance. In this work, optimization based controllers are designed and implemented experimentally on a flexible beam with active constrained layer damping treatment. It is observed that loop shaping design procedure based controllers outperform linear quadratic Gaussian and standard controllers both in terms of robust stability and robust performance. Relative merits and demerits of the controllers designed using - synthesis technique are also discussed. It has also been observed that time domain results also explain some of the important facts. Certain time domain parameters of the CL system prove the relative superiority of these controllers in terms of control energy utilization and robust performance.