Embedded Computer Based Active Vibration Control System for Vibration Reduction of Flexible Structures

Research on Active Vibration Control System (AVCS) is being carried out to reduce structural vibrations caused by unwanted vibrations in many application areas such as in space, aircraft structures, satellites, automobiles and civil structures (bridges), particularly at low frequencies. The unwanted vibration may cause damage to the structure or degradation to the structure’s performance. The AVCS comprises physical plant, a sensor to detect the source vibration, a DSP based electronic controller using an actuator connected to the structure generates a counter force that is appropriately out of phase but equal in amplitude to the source vibration. As a result two equal and opposite forces cancel each other by the principle of super position and structure stops vibrating. The main objective of this research work is to develop an embedded computer based real time AVCS for reducing low frequency tonal vibration response of a vibrating flexible cantilever beam by automatic modification of the vibrating beam’s structural response and to verify the performance of the developed system experimentally. The developed AVCS is a generic design platform that can be applied for designing adaptive feed forward AVC and feedback AVC. This study presents the vibration control methodology adapted for reducing tonal vibration generated by a sine generator connected to the primary source actuator attached to one end of the cantilever beam. The secondary actuator is attached to the beam on the other end through the AVCS to reduce primary vibration by destructive interference with the original response of the system, caused by the primary source of vibration. Adaptive feed forward Active Vibration Control (AVC) technique is used with Filtered-X Least Mean Square (FxLMS) algorithm using FIR digital filter. A cantilever beam was considered as plant and embedded computer based AVCS was tested and evaluated using an experimental setup. The experimental results are presented for the cantilever beam excited at one of its natural frequency using active vibration control system and an appreciable reduction was achieved up to 20 dB.