Round Table Discussion on Passive Versus Active Damping

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the round table discussion on passive versus active damping. Active damping may provide greater performance than passive, frequency shaping is possible and weight may be less. The design may be much more dependent on accuracy of models of the structural behavior even for collocated sensor and actuator because of their finite bandwidth. Actuator development and laboratory demonstration is more advanced than for passive damping. The interaction of control engineers with structural analysts needs to be improved by removing artificial organizational boundaries. Unless a working relation develops in which the structural engineer is sensitive to changes which can reduce sensitivity and improve robustness, the control engineer must specify changes, rather than asking what can be done. The current tools of structural analysts are based on lossless models with damping added by noncausal, unphysical means that are poorly related to experimented verification and of little use in suggesting location, type, and size of physical damping devices.