Active vibration control of a flexible plate system

Vibration control and/or attenuation can significantly improve the performance and operation of systems and machines in various industries. As technology advances, the methods of vibration control also become more involved and therefore allow for control of more complex structures. This thesis focuses on vibration control of a flexible plate system. The basic modeling of the physical system is developed as a precursor to the controller design. Linear controllers are explored along with advanced controllers. These controllers require an accurate model of the physical system of interest. For this reason, an experimental setup is designed and developed for implementation. A major part of this thesis is devoted to the experimental design, setup, and implementation of different controllers to achieve broadband attenuation within a frequency range from 400 to 2000 Hz. An experimental setup is designed to demonstrate attenuation of flexible modes of the plate system. Actuators, accelerometers, and force sensors are specified to apply appropriate disturbance forces of varying complexity and to measure and record data necessary to update the theoretical model and design an effective controller. The experimental setup is initially made up of three relatively large stacked aluminum plates. After proof-of-concept results are obtained, the setup is scaled down to represent a more applicable system. The miniaturized setup is made up of a large base plate to distribute the input forces and a small flexible plate to be controlled. The control scheme involves non-collocation control of a location to which the accelerometer is mounted. With a desired range of attenuation, the controller is designed and developed. The initial stages involve experimental development of a PID controller using time delays and filters to attenuate multiple resonant frequencies. The controller showed 58% and 81% attenuations of the first two resonant peaks at 618 Hz and 1001 Hz, respectively. These results represent a proof-of-concept using the measured force input as feedback to the controller. In parallel, a model reference adaptive controller is explored, and data is recorded for later use in updating the model for increased accuracy. Significantly greater attenuation is envisioned with the completion of the development of this advanced controller.