In this paper we consider the problem of optimal regulation of large space structures in the presence of flexible appendages. For simplicity of presentation, we consider a spacecraft consisting of a rigid bus and a flexible beam. The complete dynamics of the system is given by a coupled set of ordinary and partial differential equations. We show that the solution of this hybrid system is defined in a product space of appropriate finite- and infinite-dimensional spaces. We develop necessary conditions for determining the control torque and forces for optimal regulation of attitude maneuvers of the satellite along with simultaneous suppression of elastic vibrations of the flexible beam.
We present a mathematical model of a crane-trolley-load model, where the crane beam is subject to the partial differential equation (PDE) of static linear elasticity and the motion of the load is described by the dynamics of a pendulum that is fixed to a trolley moving along the crane beam. The resulting problem serves as a case study for optimal control of fully coupled partial and ordinary differential equations (ODEs). This particular type of coupled systems arises from many applications involving mechanical multi-body systems. We motivate the coupled ODE-PDE model, show its analytical well-posedness locally in time and examine the corresponding optimal control problem numerically by means of a projected gradient method with Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (BFGS) update.
We prove that groups acting geometrically on delta-quasiconvex spaces contain no essential Baumslag-Solitar quotients as subgroups. This implies that they are translation discrete, meaning that the translation numbers of their nontorsion elements are bounded away from zero.