Performance Comparison between AFC-GA and AFC-PSO Control Schemes in Attenuating the Vibration of Suspended Handle Model

In this study, the performance of different control schemes in attenuating the vibration of suspended handle model is investigated. Prolonged exposure to the undesirable vibration of power tools can cause detrimental effects to the worker’s health and result in sickness, such as hand-arm vibration syndrome (HAVs). An effective vibration control system is necessary to suppress the vibration of the power tools, whereby vibration control through an Active Force Control (AFC) has been proven to be a feasible method from previous research. However, AFC requires proper tuning process to optimally attenuate the vibration. Thus, several intelligent tuning methods such as Crude Approximation (CA), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are implemented and compared under different disturbances. From the results, the AFC schemes are very effective in attenuating the vibration compared to the passive system and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller. Among the AFC schemes, the PSO tuning method shows the best performance even though under the influence of different disturbances. AFC with intelligent tuning method is a promising solution for vibration control especially in power tool application.