Control and stabilization of a rotating flexible structure

Abstract

We consider a flexible beam clamped to a rigid base at one end and free at the other end. We assume that the rigid base rotates with a constant angular velocity and that the motion of the flexible beam takes place on a plane. To suppress the beam vibrations, we propose dynamic control laws for boundary control force and torque, both applied to the free end of the beam. We show that, under some conditions, one of which is the strict positive realness of the actuator transfer functions which generate the boundary control force and torque, the beam vibrations asymptotically decay to zero if the rigid base angular frequency is sufficiently small. Moreover, if the transfer functions are proper but not strictly proper, we show that the decay is exponential. We also give a bound on the constant angular velocity above which the system becomes unstable.