Robust vibration control of piezoelectric actuated smart structures has attracted substantial interest in recent years. Such control laws are desirable for systems where guaranteed stability or performance is required despite the presence of multiple sources of uncertainty. In this work, we review the principal problems that the structural control engineer has to address when designing robust control laws: structural modeling techniques, uncertainty modeling, controller order reduction, and robustness validation. A comprehensive literature review is presented and the different techniques employed are discussed in detail in a tutorial manner for the case of a piezoelectric smart plate, with the aim of providing a comprehensive and unitary methodology for designing and validating robust $H∞$ controllers for active structures.

This paper presents the development of a multimodal H_∞controller for piezoelectric actuated plates designed to simultaneously suppress vibrational components of the first two modes. The controller is developed for a reduced structural model. The closed-loop control scheme is subject to both uncertainties due to control and observation spillover in the unmodeled residual modes and to parametric errors in the structural model. The closed-loop stability and performance robustness is analyzed using μ-analysis, and numerical investigations indicate that the controller tolerates uncertainties of significant size.

Among the factors that influence the resilience and sustainability of cities in general, and of inhabited spaces in particular, there are extreme temperatures and, in particular, for people, thermal comfort is something that should be considered. This problem includes all aspects of comfort for users of inhabited spaces in both buildings and vehicles. The purpose of this paper is to present the details of a recently designed and created thermal manikin that comprises 79 superficial zones with independent neuro-fuzzy temperature regulation. Both the component parts of the manikin and the acceptance strategy are described. Flexible heating elements were used to control the temperature, on which five digital sensors are positioned. In order to establish the relationship between heat loss and ambient temperature, the thermal manikin was calibrated in a climatic chamber. The thermal manikin was able to predict local sensations through the equivalent temperature concept of the so-called Predicted Mean Vote.

A method of designing the controller to solve the robust servomechanism problem is applied in the case of an electrohydraulic servo actuating primary flight control. This method is based on the well‐known solution consisting of two separate devices: a servocompensator, in fact an internal model of the exogenous dynamics, including the reference commands and disturbance signals; and a stabilizing compensator. The proof is made involving the servocompensator structure which is close to the one designed for step signals. The stabilizing compensator is assured by way of a linear quadratic optimal procedure. An antiwindup compensation is added to deal with the adverse effects caused by actuator saturation.

Presents a switching type neuro‐fuzzy control synthesis. The control algorithm supposes as a component part a neurocontrol designed to optimize a performance index. Whenever the neurocontrol saturates or a certain performance parameter of the system decreases, the scheme of control switches to a feasible and reliable fuzzy logic control. Describes the procedure of return to the optimizing neurocontrol which is essential. This methodology of control synthesis ensures antisaturating, antichattering and robustness properties of the controlling system, as illustrated by numerical simulation in the case of a primary flight controls electrohydraulic servo actuator