METHOD FOR OPTIMAL ACTUATOR AND SENSOR PLACEMENT FOR LARGE FLEXIBLE STRUCTURES

A method of finding the optimal sensor and actuator locations for the control of flexible structures is presented. The method is based on the orthogonal projection of structural modes into the intersection subspace of the controllable and observable subspaces corresponding to an actuator/sensor pair. The controllability and observability grammians are then used to weight the projections to reflect the degrees of controllability and observability. This method produces a three-dimensional design space wherein sets of optimal actuators and sensors may be selected. A novel parameter is introduced that is potentially useful for studying the problem of the number of actuators and sensors, in addition to their optimal locations.