Products & Services  –  Vibration Analysis Hardware & Software

Until now, to know the dynamic behavior of a structure, it was necessary to use a shaker, which can disrupt sensitive equipment. In contrast to the forces created by the moving shaker, the solid-state IntelliVibe Diagnostic System creates small strain energies. This product consists of up to 6 IntelliVibe actuators and IntelliPower, a customized power and signal distribution board. IntelliPower is powered by a universal AC adapter supplied with the system and receives up to two signals from an external function generator (not supplied). IntelliPower combines the power and signal using power-over-ethernet protocol. This signal is available to up to three actuators per channel, for a total of up to six actuators.

The IntelliVibe actuators are specifically designed to perform diagnostic measurements on a structure. The pre-assembled device is easily attachable with electrical release epoxy, so the actuators can be re-used for different configurations. Once the acutators are attached to a structure, they can then be connected with standard RJ45 patch cables to the IntelliPower.

We are proud to introduce fe2ss, our first commercially available software product in partnership with MathWorks. fe2ss is an innovative application that enables the designers of flexible positioning systems such as precision equipment, robots, etc. to quickly and efficiently create a state space object containing the structural dynamics data from the most complicated finite element model. fe2ss is a must have tool for any engineering team that is tasked with designing high performance servo control mechanisms where structural elasticity plays a role in control design and/or performance simulation.

fe2ss User Guide.pdf

Highlights

Can be used by engineers unfamiliar with control theory

Challenges
Control engineers often face the challenge of designing controllers from data given to them by their mechanical counterparts. Mechanical designers understand the dynamics of the system but cannot design a controller whereas control engineers can design high performance controllers only if they can obtain structural dynamics data in a familiar environment such as MATLAB and SIMULINK. fe2ss provides the necessary bridge between the two by enabling accurate transfer of structural dynamics data from FE software familiar to mechanical engineers to the MATLAB and SIMULINK environments familiar to control designers.

Solutions
Anyone designing a high precision, high bandwidth servo controller needs to consider the flexible dynamics of the structure being moved. These structures are often complicated and analyzed with finite element models consisting of many thousands to many millions of degrees of freedom. Control designers cannot use models of such high order. With fe2ss it is possible to take a high order FE model and, with minimal effort and error tolerance, create a low-order (typically under 100-state variables) state-space model that leverages the full suite of MATLAB system design and analysis tools.

fe2ss uses features available in MATLAB, control system toolbox and signal processing toolbox to create a state space object, compute frequency response and compare it to the frequency response data from FEA. It also incorporates balanced model reduction. This is particularly important since during FEA many modes are considered that are only lightly controllable/observable from the existing actuator suite. Removing these modes from the final model is important not only for reducing the system order but also for improving numerical accuracy. The state space object can be imported into an LTI block in SIMULINK for control design, simulation and performance verification. It can also be used to add flexible dynamics to robotics system modeled with SimMechanics.

Comparison of frequency response obtained from FEA (low damping) and from fe2ss where higher damping was specified.

Models generated from fe2ss are very useful for studying the impact of various mechanical properties of the controlled structure such as resonant frequencies and damping on the positioning performance of the robot. Both modal damping and modal frequencies can be easily modified in fe2ss without leaving the MATLAB environment and without re-running the FE model. This enables the control designers to understand which properties would be most useful to them and specify these properties to the mechanical designers.

Applications
The main users of fe2ss are engineers and researchers working in the area of advanced motion control. The areas of application range from acoustics, aerospace and defense, automotive, industrial equipment and machinery to semiconductor capital equipment.

Whenever a reliable and user friendly way to transfer structural dynamics data from a finite element model to MATLAB or SIMULINK environment is needed to streamline the design process, fe2ss is the right tool for the job.

For a demo license please contact:
sales@iptrade.com

IPTRADE and Real Science. Real Results are service marks (SM) of IPTRADE Inc.