Experimental study of wireless structural vibration control considering different time delays

Abstract

With the development of wireless communication technology, active structural vibration control based on a wireless sensor network has tended to replace the traditional wired control method. However, the problem of time delay in a wireless control system is inevitable and requires serious attention. In this study, a wireless active vibration control scheme consisting of a cantilever beam with a piezoelectric actuator is proposed and implemented. Experimental results indicate that wireless control gives good control performance; however, because of the influence of time delay, the performance of wireless control is slightly worse than that of wired control. Therefore, a novel method for time delay compensation is presented in this study to resolve this problem. This approach takes advantage of the finite difference method to extend the state space of the cantilever beam. Additional time delay states are used to form the extended state space model for time delay compensation. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that this method can effectively compensate for time delay and enables the wireless control system to exhibit excellent control performance that can be favorably compared with that of wired control.