Sliding mode boundary control for vibration suppression in a pinned-pinned Euler–Bernoulli beam with disturbances

This work addresses the control of a pinned-pinned beam represented by the fourth order partial differential equation commonly known as the Euler–Bernoulli beam model. The system under consideration has pinned boundary conditions on one end (displacement and bending moment fixed at zero) and controlled boundary conditions on the other end (displacement and bending moment are prescribed by control functions). There are also unknown bounded disturbances included on the controlled boundary. A backstepping control technique which introduces arbitrary damping into the system is discussed, and a method for applying this control in the presence of unknown disturbances is developed using sliding mode control theory. Sliding mode controllers are developed in a way that does not create a chattering effect, which is a common issue with sliding mode control. Simulation results are presented to show how the system dampens out vibrations at an arbitrarily determined rate and how the control functions respond to unmodeled disturbances.