HIGH-PERFORMANCE, ACCELEROMETER-BASED CONTROL OF THE MINI-MAST STRUCTURE

Many large space system concepts will require active vibration control to satisfy critical performance requirements such as line-of-sight pointing accuracy and constraints on rms surface roughness. For these concepts to become operational, it is imperative that the benefits of active vibration control be practically demonstrated in ground-based experiments. This paper describes an experiment conducted on the Mini-MAST test bed, a structure located st NASA Langley Research Center that has features dynamically traceable to future space systems. The results of this experiment demonstrate the successful application of a modern control design methodology to active vibration control for a flexible structure. To maximize traceability to current night system technology, the controllers were designed and implemented using sensors (four accelerometers and one rate gyro) that are actually mounted to the structure.