Attenuation of the First-Cycle Peak Response to an Impulse Disturbance

Traditional control strategies for vibration suppression primarily focus on reducing settling time. However, this approach may not adequately address situations where the initial peak response of the vibration poses a risk of damage. This paper presents a novel application of active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) for attenuating the first-cycle peak response of free vibration in flexible structures. Inspired by the sudden impact scenario of particle accelerator collimators, a smart beam was designed to investigate the percentage first-cycle peak attenuation (FCPA) achievable by the disturbance estimation-based controller, in comparison with a classical proportional–differential (PD) controller. This study examined the limitations of the controller in mitigating initial deviations caused by real-world factors, such as delay and noise, through experimental methods. Results indicate that the PD controller achieves a maximum attenuation of 18%, while the ADRC achieves 30% attenuation. Improving the collocation configuration of the smart beam further improves the ADRC attenuation to 46.5%. Experimental data was used to fine-tune the system model in a sensitivity analysis to determine the delay within the system. Additionally, a new tuning parameter, α, representing the ratio of the observer bandwidth to controller bandwidth, was introduced to investigate the impact of observer and controller gain choices. System noise was amplified by 20 to 30 times, depending on the α value, although no significant effect on the control of the beam was observed.