Robustness analysis of flexible structures: practical algorithms

When analysing the robustness properties of a flexible system, the classical solution, which consists of computing lower and upper bounds of the structured singular value (s.s.v.) at each point of a frequency gridding, appears unreliable. This paper describes two algorithms, based on the same technical result: the first one directly computes an upper bound of the maximal s.s.v. over a frequency interval, while the second one eliminates frequency intervals, inside which the s.s.v. is guaranteed to be below a given value. Various strategies are then proposed, which combine these two techniques, and also integrate methods for computing a lower bound of the s.s.v. The computational efficiency of the scheme is illustrated on a real‐world application, namely a telescope mock‐up which is significant of a high order flexible system. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.