Active Vibration Control of Multibody Systems Application to Automotive Design

Sammanfattning: Active vibration control to reduce vibrations and structure borne noise is considered using a powerful multi-disciplinary virtual design environment which enables control system design to be considered as an integral part of the overall vehicle design.The main application studied is active automotive engine vibration isolation where, first, the potential of large frequency band multi-input multi-output H2 feedback control is considered. Facilitated by the virtual environment, it is found necessary to take non-linear characteristics into account to achieve closed-loop stability.A physical explanation to why receiver structure flexibility insignificantly affect the open and closed-loop characteristics in case of total force feedback in contrast to acceleration feedback is then given. In this context, the inherent differences between model order reduction by modal and by balanced truncation are being stressed.Next, applying state-of-the-art algorithms for recursive parameter estimation, time-domain adaptive filtering is shown to lack sufficient tracking performance to deal with multiple spectral components of transient engine excitations corresponding to rapid car accelerations.Finally, plant non-linearity as well as transient excitation are successfully handled using narrow band control based on feedback of disturbance states estimates. To deal with the non-linear characteristics, an approach to generate linear parameter varying descriptions of non-linear systems is proposed. Parameter dependent quadratic stability is assessed using a derived affine closed-loop system representation.This thesis also considers actuator saturation induced limit cycles for observer-based state feedback control systems encountered when dealing with the active isolation application. It is stressed that the fundamental observer-based anti-windup technique could imply severely deteriorated closed-loop characteristics and even sustained oscillations. That is in the case when the observer is fed by the saturated control signal in contrast to the computed one. Based on piecewise affine system descriptions, analytical tools to conclude about limit cycles and exponential closed-loop stability are provided for the two observer implementations.