Control of transient vibrations due to stage movements in 6-dof active pneumatic table by inertial force compensation

Abstract Passive pneumatic tables are popularly used in precision measurements or processes for isolation of ground vibrations over frequency ranges higher than resonance frequencies of a few Hz typically. Recently, active pneumatic tables are also used often because the passive systems are liable to table excitations in the low resonance frequency ranges, causing long settling times. In studies on the active tables, disturbances onto the tables were often regarded to be unknown and, hence, feedback control algorithms were implemented. However, the disturbances are mostly due to inertial forces due to movement of equipment on the table, e.g., x–y stages. Such a movement is given relative to the table as command inputs. Since absolute motion of the table is normally measured in an active isolation table, absolute motion of the equipment can be easily estimated for calculation of the inertial force exerted onto the table by the moving equipment. Consequently, by compensating dynamic pressure inside the pneumatic chamber to counteract with the inertia force due to the equipment motion, resultant forces acting onto the table can be made zero. In this paper, how to apply the proposed feed-forward control algorithm to a 6-degree of freedom active pneumatic table with time-delay pneumatic control is presented. Performance of the inertial force compensation control evaluated through experiments is also discussed.