Active vibration isolation by adaptive control

An adaptive controller known as the self-tuning regulator (STR) is employed for actively controlling an actuator for vibration isolation. Numerical simulations of the developed STR for active vibration isolation of a simple mass-spring-damper system of two-degree-of-freedom subject to external disturbances are carried out. Experimental studies of vibration isolation by using a magnetostrictive actuator with a Terfenol-D rod are also presented. Both studies demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the STR for active vibration isolation when the system is disturbed by a pure harmonic, two-modes harmonic, random, or even band-limited white noise excitation. In addition, the results are shown to be superior in terms of faster convergence and more vibration attenuation to those obtained by using a previously developed adaptive plant disturbance canceler.