Control of a flexible beam actuated by macro-fiber composite patches: II. Hysteresis and creep compensation, experimental results

This paper considers a flexible cantilever beam, which is actuated by piezoelectric macro-fiber composite (MFC) patch actuators. For accurate positioning tasks, special attention has to be paid to the inherent nonlinear hysteresis and creep behavior of these actuators. A detailed analysis of the MFC-actuated cantilever verifies that these nonlinearities can be efficiently captured by an operator-based model using Prandtl-Ishlinskii's theory. Based on a Hammerstein-like model with the nonlinearities at the input connected in series with a linear infinite-dimensional beam model it follows that hysteresis and creep effects can be compensated by application of the inverse operator. Experimental results prove the feasibility of this approach. With this result, the tracking accuracy of the combination of the compensator with the flatness-based feedforward control design as proposed in the companion paper (Schrock et al 2011 Smart Mater. Struct. 20 015015) can be verified. Measurements demonstrate the applicability of this approach for the realization of highly dynamic trajectories for the beam's tip deflection.