Active Isolation and Control of Vibrations

This book investigates a solution for the six-degree-of-freedom vibration isolation and suppression. Both ground and space applications have been taken into account. Vibrations propagating into the mechanical systems can cause many problems at different levels causing performance degradation for sensitive systems. The proposed solution in this work is to use a six-axis active hexapod based on Stewart platform configuration. The rigidity of the legs of this hexapod determines the application to be used for; a stiff hexapod, for example, is used as a rigid interface for active damping and precision pointing applications while a soft hexapod is used, in general, for the purpose of active isolation of vibrations. Active vibration isolation and damping of sensitive equipment is investigated here where several single-axis isolation techniques are analyzed and tested. The study of single-axis systems has been developed and used to build a six-axis isolator. A six degrees of freedom active isolator based on Stewart platform has been designed, manufactured and tested for the purpose of active vibration isolation of sensitive payloads.