Definition of mechanical design parameters to optimize efficiency of integral force feedback

Collocated IFF control strategy is commonly used thanks to its strong quality of robustness, which is due to its intrinsic damping property. Up to now, the extensive studies available in the literature have focused only on the obtained mechanical efficiency in terms of modal damping ratios. We propose here to exhibit some mechanical design parameters allowing one to really optimize this dissipation strategy, not only in terms of induced damping, but also in terms of control signal magnitudes. We apply our criterion to two different plate systems to emphasize the effects of such design variables on the control implementation. At the end, we demonstrate how the best designed system can be coupled with a non‐centralized approach to increase the implementation efficiency. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.