Model accuracy impacts for active damping of a viscoelastic beam

Abstract

This study concerns the effect of model accuracy on closed loop performance for active damping of vibrations. The system, a viscoelastic cantilever beam, is represented by Euler-Bernoulli beam equations. Standard LQG is used for control design, requiring finite order models. Two such models are produced, one based on truncated modal analysis, and one based on numerical fit of the frequency response. It is found that all controllers stabilize the system and attenuates vibrations, but controllers based on the numerically fitted model perform notably better than those based on truncated modal analysis.