Experiments on distributed active vibration control of a simply supported beam

Abstract

In this paper, the application of distributed vibration control for a flexible structure isstudied both analytically and experimentally. The purpose is to investigate the effectivenessof distributed vibration control strategies and to compare them with centralized anddecentralized methods. A simply supported beam is chosen as the illustrative flexiblestructure. A distributed control architecture is designed based on a system identificationmodel and is used to minimize vibration due to broadband disturbances. Experimentalresults are presented for the control of the beam’s vibration modes under 600 Hz. It isshown that the distributed control architecture presented here approaches theperformance of a traditional centralized controller employing the same control effort. Inaddition, in comparison to centralized control, the distributed controller has theadvantages of scalability for application in large systems and that it will continueto perform even when some processors fail, although probably with diminishedcapability.