Optimal Sensor and Actuator Placement for Active Vibration Control Systems

Abstract

Locations of sensors and actuators have major impact on the characteristics of control systems. In this paper a procedure for sensor and actuator placement for vibration control systems is presented. Two different performance criteria are used in order to find optimal positions for the system under consideration. One is considering observability and controllability only, the other one includes knowledge about a disturbance and the control objective. Both criteria are applied to a clamped plate resulting in different optimal sensor and actuator positions. The resulting configurations are investigated by comparison of optimal feed forward and H∞ feedback control of the system with identical disturbances and control objectives but different sensor and actuator positions. The required control effort and achieved amplitude reduction are employed to rate the different performance criteria that were used to determine the sensor and actuator positions. It is shown that, by placing sensors and actuators on the basis of an adequate performance criterion, increased control performance in terms of amplitude reduction per control effort is achieved.