Substructural control design for serial flexible structures using the linear quadratic Gaussian method

A substructural control technique is developed for serial flexible structures using the linear quadratic Gaussian control method. A flexible structure is suitably decomposed into substructures, and subcontrollers and subobservers arc designed for the substructures. The subcontroller forces generated within the substructures are taken into account when designing the subcontrollers and subobservers, which are assembled to obtain the global controller and observer for the entire structure. The technique is illustrated with the aid of a numerical example, which demonstrates the accuracy of the proposed substructural control technique compared with the complete structural control technique. The substructural control technique is expected to yield great computational savings in the control design of large serial flexible structures with accuracy.