Performance Enhancement of Pneumatic Vibration Isolation Tables in Low Frequency by Active Control

As environmental vibration requirements on precision equipment become more stringent, use of pneumatic isolators has become more popular and their performance is subsequently required to be further improved. Dynamic performance of passive pneumatic isolators is related to various design parameters in a complicated manner and, hence, is very limited especially in low frequency range by volume of chambers. In this study, an active control technique, so called time delay control which is considered to be adequate for a low frequency or nonlinear system, is applied to a single chamber pneumatic isolator. The procedure of applying the tine delay control law to the pneumatic isolator is presented and its effectiveness in enhancement of transmissibility performance is shown based on simulation and experiment. Comparison between passive and active pneumatic isolators is also presented.