SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF SMART STRUCTURES

The simultaneous optimal design of adaptive structural systems has bee n formulated as a multi-objective programming problem with the structu ral variables and controller parameters as design variables. To constr uct a well-behaved algorithm for the solution of a problem of such com plexity, accurate sensitivity information is essential. The purpose of this paper is to systematically evaluate the analytical expressions f or the design gradients of the various objectives and constraints with respect to the continuous design variables. Kleinman's Lemma and Bell man's expansion are employed in the derivation, and as a result, the g radient of quadratic performance criterion with respect to the open-lo op plant matrix is obtained. This result provides, along with previous results obtained by others, a complete sensitivity package for smart structural control and optimisation. With this sensitivity information , a truly simultaneous optimisation of a smart structure could be poss ible. Numerical results are presented as verification of the analytica l derivations. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.