A state-space approach for the control of multivariable dynamically substructured systems

Dynamic substructuring is an experimental technique which decomposes a complete dynamical system into a number of sub-components. Critical components are physically tested at full-size and the remaining components are simultaneously simulated in real-time. High-quality control is required to synchronize the responses of the physical and numerical components and to compensate for additional dynamics introduced by actuator systems within the physical substructures. This paper presents a new state-space approach for the analysis and synthesis of dynamically substructured systems and the associated synchronizing controller design. A new state-space substructured framework is also developed to support the synthesis of state-space dynamic models, which then leads to design and analysis of state-feedback, H-infinity, and adaptive controllers. This framework is applied to an experimental single-mode, quasi-motorcycle substructuring problem, for illustration of the concepts and for the comparison of controller performance. Implementation results demonstrated the improved performance resulting from the new approach and also the effectiveness of adaptive control in coping with uncertain and changing parameters within the physical substructures.