The 12-Meter Truss Active Control Experiment Design, Analysis and Open-Loop Testing

This report documents the design, analysis and open-loop testing of the 12-Meter Truss Active Control Experiment at Wright Laboratory. The objectives of the experiment were to develop a test bed which was representative of the dynamic characteristics of future large space systems and then evaluate the performance of leading active vibration control approaches applied to the test bed. The experimental hardware consisted of a 12-meter-long aluminum truss beam equipped with eight linear momentum exchange actuators and colocated accelerometer sensors and a fast digital control computer. The report describes in detail experiment design and hardware development activities, open-loop analysis and performance prediction, and open-loop experimental testing of the final experiment.