Modeling and control of flexible structure systems with lumped masses

This article aims to seek approaches to modeling and controlling the motion of mass-flexible structure systems composed of two lumped masses connected by two flexible structures modeled as distributed masses. The system model is first developed, and the system transfer function is then determined. With the system model, there are two control schemes (feedback control and feedforward control) proposed and implemented to track a desired trajectory. The main contributions of this article are to develop the model of mass-flexible structure systems and to seek control methods to regulate the trajectory. The simulation results show that (i) the feedback method cannot track a fast trajectory properly, and (ii) the feedforward control can track a very fast trajectory with very small tracking errors.