A New Two Degrees-of-Freedom Actuator Used for Vibration Control of Large Space Structures

For large space structures (LSS), the interaction between control system and structural vibration is a major problem. In this paper, the authors will show a new two Degrees-of-Freedom actuator called “Super precision Positioning Device (SPD)” (1)∗ which converts rotational motion to translational motion without cams or link mechanism, and experimental results of active vibration control to large space structures using the actuator as an active damping enhancer.

In the experiment, the SPD is mounted to a rigid base to which a flexible structure model is attached. The structure is a free standing flexible frame type structure and it has multi-dimensional vibration modes to simulate a real structure. The movement of the SPD is controlled to damp three dimensional vibration by sensing moments of the structure.

The experimental results in this paper shows that the SPD is capable of reducing multi-dimensional structural vibration.