Servo-Fluid-Elastic Modeling of Contactless Levitated Adaptive Secondary Mirrors

The paper develops a comprehensive approach for the servo-fluid-elastic modeling of electromagnetically levitated secondary adaptive mirrors. The system modeling includes the mirror structural dynamics model, its interaction with the fluid film interposed between the mirror and its reference backplate and disturbances due to local air turbulence. The accuracy of the proposed fluid dynamic model is assessed by comparing it with a significant sample of high fidelity 3D Navier-Stokes analyses. The simulation tool is then used to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of a recently proposed control, based on a system dynamics cancellation and an iterated steady state feedforward contribution. The simulations clearly highlights the improvements achievable implementing the new control scheme.