Abstract
Damping the vibration of structures has always been a challenge for engineers. Vibrations can degrade the function of structures and can even cause them to fail. They can be very hard to deal with in some cases. For example, in the space structures, there can be very powerful and unpredictable vibrations due to the extreme temperature change that exists in the space environment. There are many methods for damping the vibrations on a structure. A new method is to use heat elements in controlling the vibrations by transferring a specific amount of heat into actuators connecting to the surface of structure. The research and data about this method is limited, especially for two-dimensional structures like plates. Hence, this thesis aims to explore this method to control the vibration on a thin plate. First, the elastic motion of the plate affected by the heat applied through the actuators is modeled. A feedback control is designed to suppress the vibration in the plate using the heat patches on the upper and lower surfaces of the plate. The heat causes actuators to expand and because actuators are connected to the plate surface, we can control the elastic displacement of the plate where it is connected to the actuators. Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) with Kalman filter is implemented for a state-feedback control and observer. The results show that significant amount of damping can be achieved.