Broadband Structural Control using Statistical Energy Analysis Concepts

An approach is described for designing broadband controllers for flexible structures with collocated sensors and actuators. The Statistical Energy Analysis assumptions of equipartition and incoherence, together with conservation of energy, are used to express the average value of a global H2 performance metric in terms of the power dissipation of the compensator. This power dissipation can be represented using a dereverberated model; an experimentally determined local structural model that ignores the effect of the reverberant field. Minimizing the resulting cost yields controllers with good performance which are guaranteed to be stabilizing. The approach is demonstrated experimentally on the M.I.T. Space Engineering Research Center interferometer testbed. This approach achieved a performance reduction that was approximately 30% greater than the constant gain "rate feedback" approach.