Implementation of Uniform Damping Control by the Block-Independent Control Method

Abstract

The use of block-independent control is investigated for active damping of a flexible structure. The control gains are designed to approximate Uniform Damping Control, in which the target modal decay rates are equivalent. Modal estimation is performed using a Kalman filter. Reaction wheels are used to apply control torques and are found to possess significant dynamics in the controller frequency bandwidth. To reduce the effect of the actuator dynamics, the reaction wheels are targeted to control blocks of modes within the controller bandwidth, thereby providing approximate block-independent control. Analytical and experimental results indicate that the effect of modal coupling is small for low-to-medium authority block-independent control.