Vibration Control of Flexible Structures With PZT Sensors

and Actuators

YAXI SHEN
ABDOLLAH HOMAIFAR
NASA Center of Aerospace Research, Department of Electrical Engineering, North Carolina A&T
State University, Greensboro, NC 27411, USA

(Received 2 July 1999; accepted 20 June 00)

Abstract: In this paper, a two-degree-of-freedom model has been constructed for a structural dynamic system
consisting of a linear elastic plate bonded with piezoelectric sensors and actuators. A multivariable feedback
controller is designed. Four control procedures based on the minimization of performance output error and
the quadratic performance index have been developed that use rate-feedback control, hybrid fuzzy-PID con-
trol, genetic algorithms-designed PID control, and linear quadratic Gaussian/loop transfer recovery control
methods. Here, the genetic algorithm fitness function is approximately proportional to the inverse of the out-
put error. To test these control techniques in an efficient and systematic way, we built a digital control system
that consists of MATLAB/SIMULINK modeling software and a dSPACE DS 2100 controller in a personal
computer. The real-time experiment and off-line simulation results confirm that these four kinds of control
methods are reliable and efficient in suppression of the steady-state resonance vibrations.

Key Words: Modeling, active vibration control, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, optimal control, robust control

NOMENCLATURE

hpz = Thickness of the piezoelectric patch

hp = Thickness of the plate
hi = Total thickness of the plate and the piezoelectric patch
w; wd = Real and desired displacement of vibration for the plate
w’ ; w ~ = Real and desired velocity of vibration for the plate
Ypz =
Young’s modulus of the piezoelectric patch
Yp =
Young’s modulus of the plate
v = Poisson’s ratio
Z = Total number of piezoelectric patch pairs
Xp = 1 or 0 when the piezoelectric patch pair p is present or not
Fq = Lateral force applied to the plate
pp =
Density of the plate
j = Mode number
d31 =
Charge coefficient
r~ = Generalized displacement

417-
418

Wj =
Eigenfunction of free vibration
Yp = Control voltage applied to the piezoelectric patch p
r; s = Mode number along the x-axis and y-axis
a; b =
Length of the plate along the x-axis and y-axis
M - Mass matrix
C =
Damping ratio matrix
D = Control influence matrix _

K =
Spring stiffness matrix
F = Force transformation matrix .

G; = Positive definite symmetric gain matrix

m(jcv) - Multiplicative modeling discrepancy bound
e = Difference between the actual and the desired displacement
de
= Derivativeofof ee
Derivative
dt
~
Kp =
Proportional coefficient of the PID controller
Kd = Derivative coefficient of the PID controller
K; =
Integral coefficient of the PID controller
1. INTRODUCTION

Vibration control of flexible space structures has been a major research topic over the past
15 years. Space structures are required to be light in weight, and hence composite structures
are increasingly being used. Moreover, space composite structures are often designed with
built-in elastic bending-torsion couplings to improve aerodynamic efficiency. To control
such structures actively without too much added weight, the majority of the active damping
controllers developed have been based on the use of discrete point piezoelectric sensors and
actuators (PZTs). The PZTs have mechanical simplicity, small volume, light weight, large
useful bandwidth, efficient conversion of electrical to mechanical energy, ability to perform
shape control, and ability to be easily integrated with the structure. Generally, the deformation
of a PZT sensor results in an electrical current that is conditioned by operations such as
amplification and shifting of the phase of the signal. The conditioned signal is then applied
to the collocated actuators, which transfer the mechanical energy to the structure. In this way,
the vibration control of space structures can be achieved.
This study focuses on methods for achieving active damping on plate structures by use
of PZTs. A typical spacecraft or launch vehicle structure consists of a series of thin panels
that are clamped around their individual boundaries by a continuous metal frame. Avionic
equipment mounted onto these panels can be exposed to excessive vibration due to large
acoustic emanations during launch. The plate that is used in our experiment resembles the
panels that cover a space vehicle during launch (Figure 1). Electrically actuated PZT elements
mounted on the plates can create mechanical force and moments to attenuate the acoustic
vibration and protect the space payload during launch. In our experiment, there are five PZT
patch pairs that are bonded on the plate. Each pair consists of a top patch, which is bonded
on the top side of the plate (Figure 2), and an identical patch bonded on the bottom side of the

plate, directly below the top patch. The two patches sandwich the plate and constitute one
actuator. We have already conducted a real-time experiment using the plate system with an
active damping controller implemented on a personal computer. The appropriate closed-loop
 419

Figure 1. Experiment configuration.

Figure 2. Principles of piezoceramic patch operation.

420

controller (dSPACE controller) is designed and the quantitative amount of active attenuation
is measured (Shen et al., 1998). The test results indicated that these techniques can decrease
the loads on payloads and permit a reduction of the size, weight, and cost of the structure,
which can run several thousands dollars per pound.
This paper contains five sections, divided into three important topic areas: (1) modeling,
(2) control methodologies and analysis, and (3) conclusions. As mentioned in the abstract,
we have introduced rate-feedback control, hybrid fuzzy-PID control, genetic algorithms-

designed PID control, and linear quadratic Gaussian/loop transfer recovery (LQG/LTR)
control methods, and want to compare their performance via simulation. The methodology
developed in Section 2 is applicable to a plate with multiple attached piezoelectric patches.
Section 3 discusses several possible closed-loop control architectures to attenuate the
vibration disturbance on the plate.
Here the rate feedback design method is very simple; the idea is to integrate the
accelerometer signal that senses the acceleration of the plate over the PZT actuators,
amplify it, then feed it back to the PZT With the hybrid fuzzy-PID control approach, the
fuzzy logic controller and PID controller are combined together to adjust the PID gains
online. As for genetic algorithms (GA~-designed control, a real-coded GA is used, where
a chromosome comprising 15 genes represents a set of PID gains of the system. For this

application, tournament selection was chosen because of its simplicity and low cost (in terms
of computational complexity). Also, we use a steady-state GA to search for the optimal PID
gains. In LQG/LTR control design, the problem is formulated in a Kalman stochastic-like
context where the state estimation of uncertain dynamic systems in the presence of process
noise is based on noisy measurements. The Kalman filter determination is carried out by
defining a suitable performance index in terms of the state estimation error variance. Here
the control goal is to regulate the system output to zero in face of model uncertainty and
parameter variance by using the optimal state feedback gains and Kalman filter gains. We
will talk about these control methods in detail in Section 3. Section 4 presents some results
of active vibration suppression when the control architectures are tested, and conclusions are
given in Section 5.

2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF MODELING

The structure was modeled from experimental data as well as analytically from first
principles. The complete derivation of equations of the motion of the plate can be found
in Nagle et al. (1996). Here, we only present a synopsis. According to the force and moment
analysis, we can get the equation of the motion for the plate with multiple PZT patches from
the equilibrium equations of force and moments. Here we assume that the density of the
plate is approximately the same as that of the PZT, and the thickness of the PZT is negligible
compared with that of the plate.
 421

where D = Yphp/12(1 - v p), a 8ç3 + 12ç2 +6-~ hp1 /hp, ~r= Ypz / Yp.
= =

Assume W(x, y) to be separable in the x and y directions, and let the solution of the free
vibration problem ( Vp 0 and Fq
=
0) be given in the forms: (Elishakoff, 1977; Crawley
=

and Luis, 1986)

Equation 1 can be rewritten as

Assuming that the plate is homogeneous such that the elastic effect of PZT patches is
distributed over the entire plate, then an approximate solution for the eigenvalues and

eigenfunctions of equation (3) with the appropriate boundary conditions is given by

422

where a and b are the plate length along the x-axis andy-axis. Cl, cl, C2, c2, Si, Sl, S2, S2,
0 a, 6 aredefined as

For plate clamped all around, A’ and 9, which correspond to mode r in the x-direction and
a
mode s in the y direction, are the root of the following transcendental equations:

For simply supported plate, r = r, s

a = s. After applying orthogonality conditions and
expressing the solution as

the following infinite-dimensional system of equations for forced vibration can be obtained:

If the first three modes are considered, the differential equation of the plate system is given
by

According to the above derivation, we can represent the system using the state-space
equations:

Our analysis mainly concentrated on the first three mode shapes. The reasons are
 423

Table 1. Comparison of experimental and theoretical natural frequencies.

... 6’ 11 .... T&dquo;
1 - a 11 ’W&dquo;&dquo;&dquo;Itt... T1, 1 T.. T’ M

w Lower-frequency modes have much higher vibration amplitudes than the higher-frequency
modes. These modes are then the main contributor to vibration (Falangas, Dworak, and
Koshigoe, 1994).
. The actuator/sensor collocation guarantees that the system is positive real and stable re-
gardless of the gain value at the lower-frequency mode. This guarantee does not apply
to higher-frequency modes because the collocation principle does not apply to a mode
whose wavelength is comparable to the size of the PZT actuator. In addition, phase lags
and computation delays can drive some higher-frequency modes to instability.
The values of natural frequency my and damping ratio Cj are determined experimentally
using an impulse hammer test. It can also be calculated using formula (see Table 1). It was
noticed that the theoretical natural frequencies did match those obtained experimentally, but
there still is a difference. This is because in a real-life situation the boundary conditions
on a panel can never be perfectly clamped nor simply supported. Instead, we modeled
the boundary conditions as a combination of the clamped and simply supported boundary
conditions. We use a weight function for each mode to account for the contribution of the
constrained rotation on the boundaries.

3. CONTROL DESIGN

The control objectives are (1) to reduce vibrations at a given frequency or a set of frequencies,
(2) to control vibration without &dquo;spillover&dquo; into uncontrolled modes, (3) to be able to change
the frequencies to be controlled without redesign, and (4) to remain robust in face of model
uncertainty.
We prefer to use localized control for system configuration (Figure 3) (Dworak et al.,

1992). An accelerometer is used as feedback to a collocated PZT actuator. The concept in

this configuration is simple since no coordinate transformation to decouple modes is utilized.
Furthermore, it is more suitable for an application where there is insufficient knowledge about
the structural model. In this paper, we consider the following four methods.
424
 425

3.1. Rate-Feedback Control .

The rate feedback design is simple and easy to implement. The design approach is to integrate
the accelerometer signal that senses the acceleration of the plate, amplify it, and send it to
the appropriate PZT for actuation. The integration process shifts the phase by 90 degrees
to provide a rate feedback. This effect increases the damping in all controllable/observable
modes (Figure 4).

3.2. Hybrid Fuzzy-PID Design Approach

Fuzzy control is one of the more active areas of application of fuzzy logic and the underlying
fuzzy set theory introduced by Zadeh (1995). A fuzzy logic controller is an intelligent
control system that smoothly interpolates between rules, that is, rules fire to continuous
degrees and the multiple resultant actions are combined into an interpolated result. A fuzzy
set may be represented by a mathematical formulation known as a membership function.
That is, associated with a given linguistic variable (e.g., speed) are linguistic values or
fuzzy subsets (e.g., slow, fast, etc.) expressed as membership functions, which represent
uncertainty, vagueness, or imprecision in values of the linguistic variable. This function
assigns a numerical degree of membership to a crisp (precise) number. More precisely, over a
given universe of discourse (relevant numerical range) X, the membership function of a fuzzy
set, denoted by p (x), maps elements x C Xinto a numerical value in the closed unit interval,
that is, p (x) : X - [0,1]. Within this framework, a membership value of zero corresponds
to an element that is definitely not a member of the fuzzy set, while a value of 1 corresponds
to the case where an element is definitely a member of the set (Jamshidi, Vadiee, and Ross,
1993).
Implementation of a fuzzy controller requires assigning membership functions for inputs
and outputs. Inputs to a fuzzy controller are usually measured variables, associated with the
state of the controlled plant, that are fuzzified (assigned membership values) before being
processed by an interface engine. The heart of the controller interface engine is a set of
if-then rules whose antecedents and consequences are made up of linguistic variables and
associated fuzzy membership functions. Consequences from different rules are numerically
aggregated by fuzzy set union and then collapsed (defuzzified) to yield a single crisp output
as the control signal for the plant. For a more detailed introduction to fuzzy control, fuzzy
set operations, and the concepts of fuzzification, inference, aggregation, and defuzzification,
see Jamshidi, Vadiee, and Ross (1993) or Lee (1990).
The work we are about to present in this section was a step toward a systematic procedure
for analysis and design of a class of fuzzy logic controllers. The proposed approach placed
the fuzzy inference engine above a conventional PID controller within the control hierarchy,
the signal diagram is shown in Figure 5. Due to the simple structure and robust performance,
PID controllers are the most commonly used controllers in industrial process control. The
success of the PID controller depends on an appropriate choice of the PID gains. The PID

gains are usually turned by experienced human experts based on some rule of thumb. In our
experiment, we determine a set of turning rules (fuzzy if-then rules) for the PID gains by
analyzing a typical response of the system, and then combine these rules into a fuzzy system
that is used to adjust the PID gains online. We call the system that combines the fuzzy system
and PID controller hybrid fuzzy system.
426
427
428

Figure 9. Fuzzy inference system.

In the experiment, a hybrid fuzzy-PID controller is designed and simulated in MATLAB.

We select the displacement error, its time derivative, and its integral as inputs and individual
proportional, integral, and derivative coefficients of the PID controller as outputs for the fuzzy
inference system. By simulating the role of the designer of a conventional PID controller, the
fuzzy engine determined the appropriate values that the PID gains should adopt. Therefore,
at any instant of time, the overall system was actually a cascade of a &dquo;spatial&dquo; PID controller
and the process under control. This reduced the analysis of the overall system to that of a
conventional nonlinear system with available conventional analysis techniques (Lyapunov
stability analysis, for instance). On the other hand, since the fuzzy engine was used to
interpret the knowledge of a human expert in the &dquo;design&dquo; of a PID controller, the required
fuzzy rules were far more &dquo;linguistic&dquo; and therefore easier to design.
Gaussian membership functions associated with fuzzy sets are constructed to ensure a
smooth transition between neighboring fuzzy sets, the number of fuzzy attributes are chosen
for each fuzzy set, and a set of fuzzy rules is developed (Homaifar, Sayyarrodsari, and Snyder,
1994). To design the rule base, we utilize our knowledge about the system under control, as
well as the existing relationship between P, I, and D coefficients and the performance of the
plate system. Tables 6-8 reflect the developed rule base for our simulation where NL, NS, ZE,
PS, and PL stand for negative large, negative medium, zero, positive small, and positive large,
and L, ML, M, MS, and S stand for large, medium large, medium, medium small, and small,
respectively. For example, the meaning of one rule from the rule tables is the following: If
error is negative large and errordot is positive large and the integral of error is negative, then
Kp
is small, Kd is medium, and K, is medium.
Here you will see not all the rules are present in the rule tables. We modified the rule
based on the system performance. In our experiment, we find out that some rules never
participate in even one single control process, that is, they are no contribution to the system
performance, and for some other rules, although they participate in the control process, they
 429

have very weak strength, which means the defuzzified values induced by these rules are very
small, that is, they are almost no contribution to the system. Because of the above two cases,
we delete these rules from our rule base to shorten the evaluation time of the fuzzy inference

system (Homaifar, Sayyarrodsari, and Snyder 1994).

Figure 9 reflects the names and characterizing parameters (i.e., e, t
dt f e and Kp, K; and
~

Kd) of each fuzzy set (Shen and Homaifar, 1999a).

3.3. Genetic Algorithms Designed PID Control

Genetic algorithms (GAs) can be applied to control system design through performance
evaluation. Here, the problem is to search for the best proportional, integral, and derivative
coefficients (PID coefficients) using GA search techniques. Appropriate values of these
coefficients could offer an optimal response of the closed-loop system in terms of both short
rise time and small steady-state errors (Goldberg, 1989; Shen et al., 1998).
For this problem, a real-coded GA is used, where a chromosome comprising 15 genes
represents a set of PID coefficients of the PID controller. Our decision to use a real-coded
GA instead of a binary GA was based on the fact that

(1) Increasing the accuracy in binary GA usually means increasing the length of the gene,
which makes the genes very large.
(2) Often, in control applications, there are no predetermined ranges for the value of pa-
rameters (variables) to be optimized. In many cases, the variable ranges are unknown.
This is clearly the case for this problem.
For the problem under consideration, the ranges for the PID gains are unknown and a
reasonable range for them is not available. Therefore, GA starts the searches from any range
and then will evolve toward the final solution. For that, a floating-point number is used to
represent each gene. Each individual is a vector of 15 real numbers representing an initial
value set for PID gains (we have five sets of PID gains for five channels, so the length of
each individual is 15). A typical chromosome is of the form

Here, ch denotes channel.

The GA searches for desired PID gains, which minimizes output error, which is the
vibration amplitude. The simulation of the plate using these desired gains, for the specified
time, should result in a desired transfer trajectory.
An initial population is formed at random basis, then GAs use three basic operators
termed reproduction, crossover, and mutation to evolve better generations. Reproduction is
a process in which individual strings are copied according to their objective function values

f, where f is called the fitness function. Fitness is a measure of profit, utility, or goodness,
which we want to maximize. Copying strings according to their fitness values means that
430

with a higher value of f have a higher probability of contributing one or more offspring in
the next generation. The crossover operation is used to produce some offspring that inherit a
portion of the genetic material of their parents. Mutation plays a secondary role in the GAs,
altering the values of a gene at a random position on the gene string, discovering new genetic
material or restoring lost material. This operator searches the neighboring solution space and
serves to maintain the diversity of the population. Choosing the appropriate GA operators to
be used for any GA problem is very important.
For this application, tournament selection was chosen because of its simplicity and low
cost (in terms of computational complexity). Also, we use a steady-state GA rather than a
generational GA. The reason for this design decision is that in this problem the search may
start from areas very distant from the final answer; the difference between the best and the
average fitness in one generation can be very large. Hence, it must be exerted as not to
eliminate below-average individuals too quickly. Another reason (perhaps more practical)
is that our evaluation function is very expensive in terms of time. In earlier experiments
with this problem, steady-state reproduction outperformed generational reproduction in that
it evolved better solutions with far fewer function evaluations.
Choosing a proper crossover operator is crucial for a successful search. In Radcliffe’s
flat crossover, each component of parent A (in our case, y1 , one of the parameters from
five proportional coefficients and five derivative coefficients) is randomly crossed with the
corresponding component, y k , of parent B. According to the formula,

where ak is a random number between 0 and 1. Eshelman and Schaffer (1991) use a
generalization of Radcliffe’s called blend crossover (BLX-a ). BLX-a crossover follows the
same formula as Radcliffe’s but ak =
(1 + a) x rand, where rand is a uniformly distributed
random number between 0 and 1 (as in MATLAB notation).
We use random number ak - rand(1,10) + a x randn(1.10), in which randn is a
random number with Gaussian distribution with zero mean and unity standard deviation.
The Gaussian part of ak is the rate of extrapolation to values outside the region between
the parents. If ak is the same for all the pixels of an individual and with no extrapolation,
then the possibilities for the child of the parents A and B is a straight line connecting A
and B, as shown in Figure 10 for a two-dimensional space. Different ak for each variable
with no extrapolation will extend the chance of the child to be in the gray area. Adding the
extrapolation will increase the area to the bigger box in the picture. This will let the child have
the chance to go beyond the range of difference between the parents (Eshelman and Schaffer,
1991). Practically, extrapolation can be seen as mutation for real value chromosomes, and
the operation can be considered as a combined crossover-mutation operator Probabilities of
crossover and mutation in this combined operator are the same. Since we are using steady-
state GA, iteration versus generation consists of only one crossover within two randomly
chosen parents; hence, the probability of crossover and consequently the probability of
mutation are equal to one. For our problem, the extrapolation is a vital feature of the crossover
since there is no limited range defined for the genes and we need to search the entire space. By
using extrapolation, GA can start its search from any point in the space and finally converge
to a desired point in any other part of that space.
431
432

Figure 12. Signal flow of vibration control system using GA controller.

The problem with these crossover operators is that by crossing all the genes from one
parent with their corresponding genes of the other parent, the offspring become a scrambled
version of their parents and can loose their relation with their past generation. This would not
be appropriate for a weakly converging search problem. One modified crossover operator is
tried here. In Figure 11, only one gene from one parent is crossed to the corresponding gene
in the other parent. This will cause a small deviation from the parents and each child will look
very much like one of the parents. In this crossover, the offspring maintain their similarities
to their parents.
By designing the chromosome structure, fitness function, selection method, crossover,
and mutation operators, the setup for GA is complete and the search process can begin. All
the operators needed for implementation of GA are generated in MATLAB.
Population. We choose Kp(proportional coefficient), Ki(integral coefficient), and
Kd(derivative coefficient) as individuals, and since we have five channels to control, our
string length is 15. The population size is 100.
Fitness function. Here, the fitness function is a measure of how well a set of candidate
coefficients meet the design specification. A fitness value that reflects a short transient period
and small steady-state error is given by

where t is the time index in the evaluation, e is the error between the desired and real response,
De is the amount of change of e between two adjacent time indices, and Tax is the total
number of time steps chosen to ensure that the simulation reaches a steady-state. Here the
 433

value of TmaX is set about 1000 points. To adjust the overall fitness value, the scaling constant
~3 is set to 10. The diagram of GA-designed PID control is shown in Figure 12.
In Figure 12, Vis the control signal, w, w’ are the real vibration displacement and velocity,
and wd, wd are the desired vibration displacement and velocity. e, e’ are the difference and
the derivative of the difference between the real and desired displacement.

3.4. Stability Analysis

The above control methods are based on the idea of symmetric output feedback. Considering
the equation of motion of the plate,

where M is the n x n positive definite symmetric mass matrix; C is the n x n positive

semidefinite symmetric structural damping matrix; K is the n x n positive semidefinite
symmetric stifl’ness matrix, and D is the n x m control influence matrix. We introduce
the following symmetric output feedback form of the control law (collocated sensors and
actuators):

where Gl, G2 are fully populated, m x m positive definite symmetric gain matrices. With the
assumption that the sensors and actuators are perfectly linear and instantaneous, the closed-
loop equations can be written as
.. - .,

Since Gi positive definite, then the control-induced stiffness and damping perturbations
are

DG¡Dr are symmetric positive semidefinite. We have already shown that for all members
of this special class of output feedback controllers, the asymptotic stability of closed-loop
system is guaranteed. An important consequence of the stability analysis is that the stability
of a controllable symmetric system ( having symmetric positive definite output feedback) is
maintained (Junkins and Kim, 1993)
. regarrlless of inaccuracies in the parameter values used in the design.
regardless of the number of modes retained in the reduced-order model.
This result is attributable to the fact that since positive definite Gl and G2 are chosen,
M, K-f- DG1DT, C + DG2Dr are always positive definite regardless of whether full-order or
reduced-order models are used. Thus, by using the symmetric output feedback controller, the
potential instability problems due to spillover can be completely avoided and the parameters
do not have to be known accurately to guarantee stability This closed-loop stability analysis
leads us to the conclusion that if the system is controllable, the closed-loop system is at least
asymptotically stable so long as the gain matrices are chosen as positive definite matrices.
The phase plane analysis for the closed-loop is shown in Figure 13.
434
 435

3.5. LQGILTR Design Approach

The linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and the Kalman filter can be used together to design
a dynamic regulator, that is, a linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) design that enables us to
trade off regulation performance and control effort, while taking into account process and
measurement noise. The LQG design diagram is shown in Figure 14 (Lewis and Syrmos,
1995; Shen and Homaifar, 1999b). The control goal is to regulate the output y, around zero.
The plate system is given by

where x(t ) E R6 is the states, u(t ) C R5 is the control input (electric voltage), w(t ) is
the process noise from a shaker (disturbance), and v(t ) is the measurement noise. In LQG
control, the regulation performance is measured by a quadratic performance criterion of the
form

where the full-state feedback control is given by

with r(t ) being the reference input command. K is the optimal-state feedback gain. However,
the control law above cannot be implemented since not all the states usually are available as
measurements. Therefore, an observer (Kalman filter) to estimate the states is designed,

where L is the observer gain. The noise covariance data

determines the Kalman gain L. The Kalman filter is an optimal estimator that minimizes the
asymptotic covariance

The control law based on the estimate x(t) is given by

436
437
438

The control design is to choose the output weighting matrix Q, input weighting matrix
R, measurement noise covariance Qn and process noise covariance Rn , such that the
performance index J and asymptotic noise covariance T are minimized. By using the
separation principle, K is selected by solving LQR Riccati equation and L is selected by
solving Kalman filter Riccati equation through MATLAB Control Toolbox. The whole
control structures are shown in Figures 1 S, 16, and 17.

3.5.1. Frequency-Domain Robustness Bounds

We now derive the bounds on the loop-gain multiple input and multiple output Bode
magnitude plot that guarantee robustness of the closed-loop system. First, we consider the
high-frequency bound. Since the plate model G/(s) is a high-order system, it is appropriate
to find a reduced-order system that approximates the original model. The reduced-order
model G(s) is obtained by omitting high-frequency modes. In this model, six eigenvalues
are retained in G(s) using engineering judgment. These eigenvalues correspond to the first
three vibration modes of the plate system.
Let us define that the actual plant model G’(s) and the reduced-order plant G(s) differ
by multiplicative uncertainties MUw).

then,

where the unknown discrepancy satisfies a known bound

with m(jm) known for all ~. The stability robustness can translate into a requirement that
the cosensitivity T( jcv) is bounded above by the reciprocal of the multiplicative modeling
discrepancy bound m(jw). In case of high-frequency unmodeled dynamics, we can simply
write it in terms of the loop gain as

By computing or, the plot of high-frequency bound Q on the loop gain GK( jco) is given in
Figure 18. Turning to the low-frequency bound on the closed-loop gain, the plate system has
certain nonlinearity; however, we use linearized models obtained at some operating points
(resonance frequencies) for controller design. It is important for the control gains to stabilize
the system at all points near the design operating points. In passing from one operating point
to another operating point, the parameters of the model may vary (for example, eigenvalues
change ±20%). It is not difficult to show the change 6 G of the transfer function when
neglecting the second-order effects. By picking up the worst case and defining it as the
 439

low-frequency bound Q , the plot of the low-frequency bound can be obtained (Figure 18).
The vibration control using LQG/LTR design with a 20% change of eigenvalues is shown in
Figures 35 and 36.

3.5.2. Loop Transfer Recovery at the Output

For the recovery of robust loop gain at the output, the Kalman gain L needs to be determined
first for the desired robustness properties. By using MATLAB Control Toolbox, L is given
by

with

From Lewis and Syrmos (1995), we know the closed-loop system with LQG regulator has a
loop gain referred to the output of C(SI - A) -iBK(SI - (A - LC - BK)~ -1L. It is important
to select a state feedback gain K so that the LQG regulator loop gain approaches the ideal
loop gain C(SI - A)-lL. By the trial and error method, the LQR design problem is solved
with

The singular values ofthe LQG loop gain C(SI-A)-’BK(Sl- (A-LC-BK)~-1L are plotted
in Figure 20. We notice that the actual singular values described in Figure 19 approach the
target singular values in Figure 20.
From Figure 19, we can state that for the robustness in the face of the parameter variation
and model uncertainties, the maximum and minimum singular values lie within the bounds

implied by 6 G and
1
~(7~)
. Therefore, the regulator recovers the robustness of the loop gain
G(s)K(s) referred to the system output.
440
 441

4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The rectangular plate we use is .05&dquo; thick aluminum with edges of 28&dquo; and 21 &dquo;. The frame
of the structure clamps the plate between two 1 &dquo; square aluminum members. The frame
is supported at the comers with legs of angle aluminum that are anchored to a benchop,
preventing any rigid body motion. We use accelerometer (PCB SN 1722) to detect the signal.
The signal then flows to a band-pass filter, which is implemented using SIMULINK on a PC
with the sampling time of 0.1 ms. All control algorithms and A/D, D/A signal conversions
are realized through the dSPACE environment. The signal finally passes through a PCB
Piezotronics 790 series power amplifier before arriving at the actuators. In the experiment,
we use Sinusoidal noise and Gaussian random noise to excite the plate, respectively. The

figure shows the controller designed for control of the first-mode steady-state vibrations.
The result of open-loop and closed-loop real-time vibration control using the rate-
feedback controller is shown in Figure 21. Here we built a digital control system that consists
of SIMULINK modeling software and a dSPACE DS2100 controller in a Pentium computer.
The SIMULINK software is used to build the control block diagrams, and then the dSPACE
Real-Time Workshop is used to generate a C-code model from the SIMULINK model. The
C-code model is then connected by the dSPACE Real-Time interface to the dSPACE real-time
hardware system for hardware in-the-loop simulation.
As for the simulations, given the same amount of Sinusoidal and Gaussian disturbance,
respectively (see Figure 22 and Figure 20), the results of vibration control using hybrid fuzzy-
PID controller are shown in Figure 24 and Figure 25. The results of vibration control using
GA-designed PID controller are shown in Figure 26 and Figure 27; here the comparison of the
maximum, average, and minimum fitnesses is shown in Figure 28. The results of vibration
control using LQG design are shown in Figure 29 and Figure 30; here we choose

From the results of the simulation, we can get the following comparison. Given the same
initial states, process noise from the shaker, it is found at this stage that the GA-designed PID
controller has the smaller steady-state error than the hybrid fuzzy-PID designed controller and
LQG/LTR-designed controller at the first mode vibration control with sinusoidal excitation,
but it has the longest settling time. We can further evaluate the vibration damping of both
systems by using sinusoidal excitation. Given the logarithmic decrement

where Xn is the amplitude of vibration after n cycles have elapsed, the vibration damping
coefficient of the closed-loop systems is obtained using

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Table 2. The performance comparison under sinusoidal disturbance.

Please see Table 2 for details. It is also concluded that LQG/LTR control method has a shorter
settling time at damping the Gaussian noise than hybrid fuzzy-PID control and GA-designed
PID controller. As an approach of robust control, fuzzy and GA control systems are simpler
and easier to design than LQG/LTR, but the run-time of both programs is longer than that of
LQG/LTR. We have also done the robustness analysis of the hybrid fuzzy-PID controller
and GA-designed PID controller to compare the performance with other controllers. As
seen in Figures 31, 32, 33, and 34, by changing a certain amount of system parameters

(here, we change the system eigenvalues by ~20%), we can conclude from the closed-loop
performance that the hybrid fuzzy-PID controller is more robust than the GA-PID controller
This can be explained as follows. The hybrid fuzzy-PID controller can adjust the PID
gains online according to the system performance at every time step; the GA-designed PID
controller cannot do anything about model uncertainties, the best PID gains selected from a
GA blind search are based on the current system model. The system response by the use of
LQG/LTR design with the same amount of changes in eigenvalues is shown in Figures 35
and 36 for the comparison.
For the future real-time experiment, the plant models can never be exactly obtained.
Because the controllers are designed for the models, good performance in theory and in
simulations (where models are used) do not imply good performance in real implementations
(where controllers are directly applied to the real systems, not to the models), so we require
that the controller be simple, effective, efficient, and more robust to guarantee the stability of
the closed-loop systems for a wide range of plants. Further research needs to be done in this
area.

5. CONCLUSIONS

This paper has described the modeling of a controlled plate to be used for the comparison of
various control methodologies. Localized control configuration using rate feedback control,
hybrid fuzzy-PID control, genetic algorithms-designed PID control, and LQG/LTR control
are shown to attenuate vibration in plate structures. Stability analysis and robustness analysis
of this multivariable feedback control system predict the superior performance of these
control methods for a broad-band disturbance. The simulation results show that these three
controllers perform very well for controlling the Gaussian noise disturbance; GA-designed
PID controller performs better at damping the sinusoidal disturbance. The controllers with
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rate feedback, hybrid fuzzy, GA, and LQG/LTR design have the guaranteed performance and
stability robustness. The experiment also shows these controllers are reliable in actively
damping the vibration. In our view, this paper provides an appropriate framework for
optimization and robustness studies of vibration control of flexible structures. Furthermore,
real-time experiment will be developed based on the simulation results, and a comparison
will be made between these control methodologies.

Acknowledgments. We would like to thank Eric A. Wheater, Ph.D. candidate of the Structures Group of NASA
Core at North Carolina A&T State University for his assistance and involvement. This work is partially funded
by grants from the NASA Center of Aerospace at North Carolina A&T State University under grant number
NAGW 2924. ,

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