Active Vibration Damping and Model-Based Control for an Adaptronic Actuator

The static and dynamic flexibility of a machine tool is often the major limiting factor for the machining quality, especially if high processing speeds as well as high accuracies are desired. Particularly parallel kinematic machines, which have been developed for high processing speeds and accuracy and which often use lightweight structures, can suffer from severe problems with vibrations of system components and the loss of accuracy due to deformations of machine parts. Introducing so–called adaptronic or smart components into the machine tool structure opens up new and interesting possibilities to actively control the deformations and vibrations of flexible machine parts. They allow to specifically target such undesired properties and to significantly reduce or even eliminate their influence on the system performance. Concepts of active vibration damping and model–based control are presented here for such an adaptronic actuator implemented in a machine tool with parallel kinematics. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)