Vibration Reduction of Flexible Structures During Slew Operations

摘要

Vibration reduction of flexible structures during slew operations poses a challenging task. Slew of flexible structures arises in many situations such as attitude control of spacecraft with large solar array panels and rotation of flexible robotic manipulators. In this paper, a new approach for vibration reduction of flexible structures during slew operations is proposed. The new approach integrates the method of command input shaping and the technique of active vibration suppression. In this new approach, the method of command input shaping is used to modify the existing command so that less vibration will be caused by the command itself. The technique of active vibration suppression using smart materials is used to actively control the vibration during and after the slew. To experimentally verify this new approach, an apparatus of a flexible rotating beam with a smart material actuator and sensor is built. In this setup, two piezoelectric patches are bonded on the surface of the flexible beam near its cantilevered end and are used as the smart actuator and the smart sensor respectively. With this pair of smart actuator and smart sensor, a strain rate feedback (SRF) controller is designed for active vibration suppression. With the Zero Vibration Derivative (ZVD) shaper and the SRF controller, the proposed new approach can significantly reduce the vibration of the flexible beam during slew operations.