Mechanics and Control of Large Flexible Structures

The merger of mechanics and controls of structures into a unified field has been the product of research by hundreds of individuals over the past decade. This tutorial reports on the research efforts of three dozen invited authors—all excellent researchers in their fields. The book is divided into three major parts: Part I considers structural modeling, multibody dynamics, and system identification issues; Part II deals with theoretical and computational methods for feedback control design, order reduction, stability of time varying systems and nonlinear optimization; and Part III addresses analytical and experimental methods for control/structure interaction, feedback control law design for flexible systems undergoing large motions, and tether connected systems. Each part contains one or more review chapters that broadly address major subsets of the research literature, as well as several more sharply focused chapters on recent methodology and experimental results.