A modal filter approach to non-collocated vibration control of structures

This paper employs modal filters for simultaneous and independent control of multiple vibration modes of a flexible structure embedded with a non-collocated pair of sensor and actuator. Each modal filter of second order is designed to be sensitive to the target mode for control while insensitive to the others. Based on the fact that there are only in- and out-of-phase modes in lightly and proportionally damped finite structures, those in-phase modes are controlled in the same way as that for collocated control using negative feedback, while those out-of-phase modes are controlled exactly in the opposite way using positive feedback. These two are equivalent as far as single mode control is concerned and are electrical realizations of a mechanical dynamic vibration absorber. Feedback control experiments were conducted on a cantilever beam embedded with a piezoelectric actuator at the root and an accelerometer at the end tip. The results reveal a number of peculiar advantages of using non-collocated control over collocated control. Non-collocated plants generally exhibit better high-frequency roll-off characteristics because there are weaker mechanical and electrical feedthrough couplings between non-collocated transducers. Furthermore, the high frequency control spillover can be greatly eliminated by appropriately adjusting the gains of modal filters. It is thus often possible to make the performance and robustness of non-collocated control as well as or even better than those using collocated control.