Stability and Control of a Parametrically Excited Rotating Beam

Abstract

In this paper the stability and control of a parametrically excited, rotating flexible beam is considered. The equations of motion for such a system contain time periodic coefficients. Floquet theory and a numerical integration are used to evaluate the stability of the linearized system. Stability charts for various sets of damping, parametric excitation, and rotation parameters are obtained. Several resonance conditions are found and it is shown that the system stability can be significantly changed due to the rotation. Such systems can be used as preliminary models for studying the flap dynamics and control of helicopter rotor blades and flexible mechanisms among other systems. To control the motion of the system, an observer based controller is designed via Lyapunov-Floquet transformation. In this approach the time periodic equations are transformed into a time invariant form, which are suitable for the application of standard time invariant controller design techniques. Simulations for several combinations of excitation and rotation parameters are shown.