Engineering topics

O'Brien, John

Publications and source records attributed to O'Brien, John.

5 records

NASA NTRS1995

Micro-Precision Interferometer: Pointing Control System

This paper describes the development of the wavefront tilt (pointing) control system for the JPL Micro-Precision Interferometer (MPI). This control system employs piezo-electric actuators and a digital imaging sensor with feedback compensation to reject errors in instrument pointing. Stringent performance goals require large feedback, however, several characteristics of the plant tend to restrict the available bandwidth. A robust 7th-order wavefront tilt control system was successfully implemented on the MPI instrument, providing sufficient disturbance rejection performance to satisfy the established interference fringe visibility.

Micro-Precision Pointing↗

NASA NTRS1993

Structural and Optical Pathlength Control Experiments on a Precision Truss

An experimental implementation of a nanometer level optical pathlength controller for long baseline space interferometry is presented. The pathlength compensation system is tested on a large precision truss structure and thus structural dynamics play a dominant role in the control system design.

telemetry precision truss↗

NASA NTRS1993

Optical pathlength control experiment on JPL phase B testbed

An experimental implementation of a nanometer level optical pathlength control for large baseline space interferometry is presented. The pathlength compensation system is installed on a large flexible experimental truss, thus structural motions play a dominant role in the control system design. The associated control structure interaction problem is addressed to maintain the optical pathlength within the prescribed variation of 10-15 nanometer rms. By a successful blend of a structural control for damping augmentation and a direct pathlength control for the pathlength compensation, the optical pathlength variation has been maintained with 6 nanometer rms under the laboratory ambient disturbance and within 9 nanometer rms under a severe forced resonant disturbance.

Rahman, Zahidul H.↗

NASA NTRS1993

A layered approach to structural control system design for the JPL phase B testbed

This paper describes our efforts in structural control experiments for a flexible precision structure using both passive and active control. Specifically, a layered structural control approach utilizing passive viscous dampers, colocated and noncolocated active control is used. The passive dampers and active colocated control loops are used to enhance stability and robustness and the noncolocated multivariable controller is designed with respect to a partially controlled structure to further improve the performance. Our approach to the multivariable design problem requires not only a state space model description of the plant, but also an accompanying uncertainty model. To support the multivariable robust control design development, a significant effort in system identification was undertaken. The process of identification and identified results are discussed. Noncolocated controllers are designed using the H(infinity)/mu-synthesis methodology. The order of the controller is typically large, hence, model reduction is performed for practical digital implementation on a real-time control system developed at JPL. Finally, experimental results are presented and some of lessons are discussed.

Chu, Cheng-Chih↗

NASA NTRS1992

Active damping with a reaction mass actuator

This paper presents analytical and experimental results in actively damping flexible structures with reaction mass actuators. A two degree of freedom spring-mass model of a flexible structure is analyzed and the key parameters of actuator mass participation and pole-zero separation are related to the maximum damping achievable from rate feedback control. The main conclusion of the paper is that the larger the pole-zero separation the larger the amount of damping that can be imparted to a structural mode. Laboratory experiments conducted on an 8-foot truss structure support the analytical predictions.

Spanos, John↗