Dynamic boundary control of a rotating flexible structure

A flexible spacecraft is modeled as a rigid body that is free to rotate in an inertial frame. A light flexible beam is clamped to the rigid body at one end and is free at the other end. It is shown that suitable dynamic boundary force and moment controls applied to the free end of the beam and suitable control torques applied to the rigid body stabilize the system, in the sense that the energy associated with the system decays to zero. Two different control laws are proposed to stabilize the flexible spacecraft. The stability proofs are obtained by using the energy of the system as a Lyapunov function.<<ETX>>