Adaptive control for a class of flexible mechanical systems with bending deformation and torsion deformation in the presence of nonlinear time-varying actuator faults and unknown control directions

Vibration control problem of a class of flexible mechanical systems with bending deformation and torsion deformation in the presence of nonlinear time-varying actuator faults and unknown control directions is considered in this paper. The dynamics model of this kind of flexible mechanical system, which includes two kinds of coupled vibration deformation and unknown nonlinear disturbances, is composed of some partial differential equations. In order to overcome the control difficulty brought by unknown control directions and time-varying nonlinear actuator faults, a Nussbaum function based adaptive boundary controller is designed to suppress the bending and twist vibration deformations of the mechanical system. The stability of the system is proved by Lyapunov direct method, and the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified by numerical simulation at the end of this paper.