Damage-mitigating control of mechanical structures: experimental verification of the concept

The concept of damage-mitigating control is built upon the two disciplines of control systems and mechanics of materials, and its goal is to achieve optimized trade-off between the system performance and structural durability of the plant under control. Simulation studies have shown a substantial reduction in the damage accumulation in the critical components of a rocket engine with no significant loss of performance. This paper reports experimental verification of the damage-mitigating control concept on a laboratory testbed which is a two-degree-of-freedom mechanical system excited by a computer-controlled shaker table. Test results demonstrate: (i) the important feature of optimized damage-mitigating control by extending fatigue life up to three and one half times with no significant performance degradation; and (ii) close agreement between the analytical prediction of damage and experimental observations.