The piezoelectric smart structures, which can be labeled as the cream of the crop of smart structures without overstatement, are strongly impacted by a large number of uncertainties and disturbances during operation. The present paper reviews active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) technologies developed for application in piezoelectric smart structures, focusing on measurement, analysis, estimation, and attenuation of uncertainties/disturbances in systems. It first explained vast categories of uncertainties/disturbances with their adverse influences. Then, after a brief introduction to the application of basic ADRC in smart structures, a thorough review of recently modified forms of ADRC is analyzed and classified in terms of their improvement objectives and structural characteristics. The universal advantages of ADRC in dealing with uncertainties and its improvement on the particularity of smart structures show its broad application prospects. These improved ADRC methods are reviewed by classifying them as modified ADRC for specific problems, modified ADRC by nonlinear functions, composite control based on ADRC, and ADRC based on other models. In addition, the application of other types of active anti-disturbances technologies in smart structures is reviewed to expand horizons. The main features of this review paper are summarized as follows: (1) it can provide profound understanding and flexible approaches for researchers and practitioners in designing ADRC in the field and (2) light up future directions and unsolved problems.

Considering the problems of total disturbances, i.e., higher harmonics, model uncertainties and external excitations in a practical vibration control system, a compound vibration suppression method is proposed for an all-clamped plate, which combines sliding mode control (SMC) with reduced-order extended state observer (RESO). First, a state space model of the all-clamped plate with inertial actuator is established. Second, a RESO is designed to estimate the system state variables and total disturbances in real time. In addition, the total disturbances can further be attenuated by RESO through a feedforward compensation part. Third, a sliding mode controller based on the estimation values is designed for a vibration control system. The Lyapunov stability theorem is further applied to prove the stability of the whole closed-loop vibration control system with the proposed controller. Finally, vibration control experiment equipment is built based on the NI-PCIe acquisition card, inertial actuator and acceleration sensor to verify the vibration suppression performances of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the amplitude value of vibration has been reduced by 75.2% with the proposed method, while the amplitude value is reduced by 54.5% with the traditional sliding mode control method based on an extended state observer (SMC-ESO). The comparative experimental results illustrate that the proposed method has excellent anti-disturbance and vibration suppression performances.

Considering the internal and external disturbances of direct‐driven wind turbine‐based permanent magnet synchronous generation system, an extended state observer (ESO)‐based sliding mode variable structure control strategy is proposed to improve the maximum power tracking performance of the system. The ESO is used to estimate the effects of the disturbances, such as dynamical uncertainties, modelling error, external forces, variety of wind speed and so on, and eliminate the disturbances by the feedforward compensation. The simulation results show that the control system not only effectively improves the anti‐disturbance ability of the system, but also solves the chattering problem of sliding mode control system to a certain extent.

In this paper, we mainly aimed to design a reduced-order extended state observer-based active vibration controller for a structural vibration control system with total disturbances, i.e., model uncertainties, higher harmonics, and external excitations. A reduced-order extended state observer (RESO)-based nonsingular terminal sliding mode vibration control (RESO–NTSMVC) method is proposed for the vibration suppression of an all-clamped plate structure with an inertial actuator. First, a second-order state space model of the thin plate, with an inertial actuator, was established by solving the dynamic partial differential equation and analyzing the physical model. Second, the total disturbances, i.e., model uncertainties, higher harmonics, and external excitations, were estimated and compensated for by using a RESO via a feedforward part. Third, a NTSMVC based on an estimated value was designed to obtain a fast-tracking rate and effective vibration suppression performance. In addition, the stability of the closed-loop system was proven by using a Lyapunov stability criterion. Finally, a semi-physical experimental instrument was built based on the MATLAB/Simulink real-time environment and the NI-PCIE6343 acquisition card to verify strong anti-disturbance performance and effective vibration control performance of the designed method. The experimental comparison results showed that the vibration amplitudes of the proposed method could be reduced by 11.7 dB, when the traditional extended state observer-based nonsingular terminal sliding mode vibration control (ESO–NTSMVC) method achieved a control effect of only 6.5 dB. The comparative experimental results showed that the proposed method possessed better vibration suppression performance and anti-disturbance performance.

In this paper, active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is applied to the vibration control of the all-clamped plate structure with an inertial actuator. Knowing that modeling uncertainties, dynamic nonlinearities and multivariable couplings are often the major causes of a downgrading performance and instability, a cascade ADRC controller is, hence, utilized to mitigate the effects of these issues. The dynamics regarding the all-clamped plate structure and inertial actuator are obtained through theoretical analysis and experimental testing. Furthermore, the real-time control experimental verification is carried out on the hardware-in-the-loop platform based on the NI PCIe-6343 data acquisition card. The comparative experimental results show that the proposed cascade ADRC controller has a better vibration suppression performance, disturbance rejection performance and decoupling ability.