Six Degree of Freedom Active/Passive Launch Isolation System

Intelligent Automation, Incorporated, has demonstrated a sixdegree of freedom vibration control system capable of providing active structural vibration control and vibration isolation. Our work differs from the enormous wealth of work already done in active vibration isolation because our work focuses on six degree of freedom vibration isolation. Mechanically, our system uses a unique configuration which decouples the motion in each of the six degrees of freedom. The actuators we developed exploit magnetostrictive material and therefore have higher force capability and longer stroke than piezoelectric actuators which are conventionally used, and magnetostrictive material has no known deterioratioin with age (while piezoelectrics are known to deteriorate with age). Algorithmically, we developed an adaptive filter approach to six degree of freedom vibration isolation which dynamically learns the characteristics of the host structure. Experimental hardware was built and tested. Our system obtains 30 dBs of attenuation in the accelerations measured on the isolated structure when the active control system was operating. This proposal details how we will apply and extend our previous results ot active/passive launch payload isolation systems.