Robust Performance Analysis of an Active Damping System via Polytopic Polynomials

An active damping system is designed to provide damping for a subset of bending modes of a flexible structure in the presence of plant uncertainties. The polytopic polynomial and structured singular value approaches for computing the real multivariable stability margin are used to analyze the robust performance of this active damping system for a large space structure. Sensitivities of guaranteed closed loop damping to modal stiffness, modal mass, and modal deflection variations are analyzed.