Effective piezoceramic actuator placement for an experimental flexible wing

The effectiveness of individual or subsets of piezoceramic actuators are investigated in terms of their contributions to the joint controllability and observability for a fixed set of sensors. The method used is based on an earlier result which allows the decomposition of the Hankel singular values in terms of individual sensor and actuator combinations for general multivariable flexible structures. The degree of participation of the individual structural modes in the flutter control problem is used to weigh the actuator placement metric in the feedback loop. Simulation results based on HI and H^ control law designs indicate that closed loop performance can be improved significantly and the performance improvement is independent of the particular type of control law.