Homogeneous active vibration control of cable‐mesh reflector antenna

Abstract

This article presents an active vibration controller that employs homogeneous system properties to suppress the vibrations of a cable‐mesh reflector antenna caused by external disturbances. An overall cable‐mesh reflector antenna dynamic model with piezoelectric (PZT) actuators is established using the finite element method. To facilitate the active vibration controllers design, the overall cable‐mesh reflector antenna dynamic model is transformed into a modal coordinate system, and its order is reduced based on the modal cost analysis method. A linear‐quadratic regulator (LQR) is first designed, and then upgraded to a homogeneous controller by employing the generalized homogeneous system theory and saturation function. The homogeneous controller and LQR are compared in the suppression of the free and forced vibrations of the antenna. For the active vibration control of the antenna, it is demonstrated that the designed homogeneous controller, compared with LQR, has faster convergence speed, better control performance and robustness for the suppressions of different types of vibrations. The effectiveness of the designed homogeneous controller for the active vibration control is verified by the simulation results on the 5‐meter diameter cable‐mesh reflector antenna.