Active Vibration Control on a Smart Composite Structure using Modal-Shaped Sliding Mode Control

This paper proposes an active modal vibration control method based on a modal sliding mode controller applied to a smart material composite structure with integrated piezoelectric transducers as actuators and sensors. First, the electromechanical coupled system is identified using a modal reduced-order model. The sliding surface is based on the modal-filtered states and designed using a general formulation allowing the control of multiple vibration modes with multiple piezoelectric sensors and actuators. The performance and stability of the nonlinear controller are addressed and confirmed with the experimental results on a composite smart spoiler-shaped structure. The nonlinear switching control signal, based on the modal-shaped sliding surface improves the performances of the linear part of the control while maintaining not only stability but also robustness. The attenuation level achieved on the target modes on all piezoelectric sensors starts from -14dB up to -22dB, illustrating the strong potential of nonlinear switching control methods in active vibration control.