Control of Linear Time-varying Structures by Vibration Confinement Using Limited Number of Actuators

A control strategy based on time-varying gains for suppression and confinement of vibrations in linear time-varying structures using a limited number of actuators is proposed. It is assumed that the structure consists of parts that are sensitive to vibration. The proposed strategy makes use of control inputs whose number is less than or equal to that of the dimension of the discretized model. The design objective is to devise a time-varying feedback scheme that leads to transferring the vibrational energy from the sensitive parts to the remaining parts of the structure. An illustrative example of a system of five coupled pendulums moving in a horizontal plane, and subjected to time-dependent loading was simulated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.