Moving toward low frequencies active vibration control with inertial actuators

In applications of vibration suppression, control forces ideally act on the structure increasing its damping. While the frequency response of the structure is guaranteed to have a positive real part under ideal conditions, in practice a stability limit exists when inertial actuators are used. In this case the system response is no longer guaranteed to be positive real and so the control system may become unstable at high gains. Moreover, traditional approaches suggest the use of inertial actuators only if its natural frequency is well below the natural frequency of the structure, thus preventing their use at low frequencies. This paper proposes an interesting technique to enlarge the operational range to lower frequencies and to allow the use of inertial actuators. The approach is numerically tested and experimentally validated on a test rig.