This thesis presents the practical and novel work in the area of optimal placement of actuators and sensors for sound-structure interaction systems. The work has been done by the author during his PhD candidature. The research is concentrated in systems with non-ideal boundary conditions as in the case in practical engineering applications. An experimental acoustic cavity with five walls of timber and a thin aluminium sheet fixed tightly on the cavity mouth is chosen in this thesis as a good representation of general sound-structure interaction systems. The sheet is intentionally so fixed that it does not satisfy ideal boundary conditions. The existing methods for obtaining optimal sensor-actuator location using analytic models with ideal boundary conditions are of limited use for such problem with non-ideal boundary conditions. The method presented in this thesis for optimal placement of actuators and sensors is motivated by energy based approach and model uncertainty inclusion. The optimal placement of actuator and sensor for the experimental acoustic cavity is used to construct a robust feedback controller based on minimax LQG control design method. The controller is aimed to reduce acoustic potential energy in the cavity. This energy is due to the structure-borne sound inside the sound-structure interaction system. Practical aspects of the method for optimal placement of actuator and sensors are highlighted by experimental vibration and acoustic noise attenuation for arbitrary disturbance using feedback controllers with optimal placement of actuator and sensor. The disturbance is experimentally set to enter the system via a spatial location different from the controller input as would be in any practical applications of standard feedback disturbance rejections. Experimental demonstration of the novel methods presented in this thesis attenuate structural vibration up to 13 dB and acoustic noise up to 5 dB for broadband frequency range of interest. This attenuation is achieved without the explicit knowledge of the model of the disturbance.

Modern interconnected power systems are becoming highly complex and sophisticated, while increasing energy penetrations through congested inter-tie lines causing the operating point approaching stability margins. This as a result, exposes the overall system to potential low frequency power oscillation phenomena following disturbances. This in turn can lead to cascading events and blackouts. Recent approaches to counteract this phenomenon are based on utilization of wide area monitoring systems (WAMS) and power electronics based devices, such as flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) and HVDC links for advanced power oscillation damping provision. The rise of hybrid AC-DC power systems is therefore sought as a viable solution in overcoming this challenge and securing wide-area stability. If multiple FACTS devices and HVDC links are integrated in a scheme with no supervising control actions considered amongst them, the overall system response might not be optimal. Each device might attempt to individually damp power oscillations ignoring the control status of the rest. This introduces an increasing chance of destabilizing interactions taking place between them, leading to under-utilized performance, increased costs and system wide-area stability deterioration. This research investigates the development of a novel supervisory control scheme that optimally coordinates a parallel operation of multiple FACTS devices and an HVDC link distributed across a power system. The control system is based on Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) modern optimal control theory. The proposed new control scheme provides coordinating control signals to WAMS based FACTS devices and HVDC link, to optimally and coherently counteract inter-area modes of low frequency power oscillations inherent in the system. The thesis makes a thorough review of the existing and well-established improved stability practises a power system benefits from through the implementation of a single FACTS device or HVDC link, and compares the case –and hence raises the issue–when all active components are integrated simultaneously and uncoordinatedly. System identification approaches are also in the core of this research, serving as means of reaching a linear state space model representative of the non-linear power system, which is a pre-requisite for LQG control design methodology.