A Comparison of State Space LQG, Wiener IMC and Polynomial LQG Discrete Time Feedback Control for Active Vibration Control Purposes

A comparison of three ways of designing optimal discrete time feedback controllers has been carried out via computer simulations. The three design methods are similar in that they are all based on the minimisation of a quadratic cost function under certain assumptions about the disturbance noise and sensor noise in the system to be controlled. They are also based on (different) models of the plant under control and the disturbance to be suppressed by the controllers. Controllers based on the three methods have been designed from a model of a lightly damped, rectangular plate fitted with a piezoceramic patch control actuator and a point velocity sensor and excited by a point force driven by white noise acting as the primary source. The design objective has been to suppress the effect of the primary disturbance on the output by minimising the mean square value of the output. Apart from comparing the performance of the different controllers issues such as stability robustness, controller order reduction and the effect of time delays in the feedback loop have been adressed in the simulations.