Integrated Active Vibration Control and Structural Health Monitoring of Flexible Spacecraft Panels

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents an integrated active vibration control (AVC) and structural health monitoring (SHM) framework for flexible spacecraft panels using offset piezoelectric stack actuators (OPSA). A three-dimensional ANSYS finite-element model of a hub–panel assembly with eccentric OPSA mounting is reduced to a low-order state-space model retaining the first two bending modes. Based on this model, a mixed-sensitivity H_∞ controller is designed for robust vibration suppression and compared with an LQR baseline. For SHM, root delamination is represented as an equivalent stiffness loss at the clamp over a 0–40% damage range, and damage-sensitive features are extracted from the closed-loop impulse response, including modal frequency drops, RMS control voltage, residual tip vibration, and settling time. A physics-informed Gaussian process regressor trained on 200 virtual experiments accurately estimates the damage parameter, achieving R^2≈1.000and an RMSE of about 0.25% damage. Over the investigated range, RMS control voltage increases from 48.2 V to 144.6 V, while residual tip amplitude rises from 0.315 mm to 0.633 mm, confirming strong monotonic sensitivity to structural degradation. The results demonstrate that the OPSA–H_∞ loop can provide both robust vibration suppression and a dual-use sensing channel for quantitative damage estimation without additional dedicated SHM hardware.