This paper aims at the chatter problem in thin-walled parts, which is dominated by the flexibility of the workpiece. A chatter suppression method for the piezoelectric intelligent thin plate was presented based on the PD–sliding mode control (SMC) coupled algorithm. Firstly, an active control algorithm with only displacement measurement required was designed. The uncertainty of system parameters and the external disturbance were treated by the SMC theory. In addition, a dynamic compensator was established to approximate and compensate the unknown cutting state online. To overcome the sensing error and system delay, a time-space-varying PD control method was further coupled in the SMC.
The time-varying functions of control parameters were fitted with the help of ABAQUS simulation. Finally, a set of active control devices was designed for thin-walled workpiece. The experimental results show that the milling chatter of thinwalled parts can be suppressed effectively under active control, which verifies the feasibility of the proposed method.