Experiments on Point-to-Point Position Control of a Flexible Beam Using Laplace Transform Technique: Part I—Open-Loop

Abstract

When lightly damped flexible structures are used in high bandwidth applications, the elimination of residual vibration during point-to-point positioning is an important engineering problem. Using the Laplace domain synthesis technique introduced in earlier publications, experiments on the precise point-to-point position control of a flexible beam have been performed. In Part I of this two-part paper, results related to open-loop control are presented. A variety of candidate control functions are evaluated and performance issues related to robustness and sensitivity are investigated.