Observer‐based output feedback control for a rotating beam with a general exosystem

Abstract This paper considers a rotating Euler‐Bernoulli beam system with no dampings, where disturbances and references are generated from a block diagonalizable exosystem. Two tracking errors are the only measurable outputs for the output regulation of the beam system. Firstly, a nominal exosystem is chosen to generate the same signals, and a nominal beam is obtained by finding the specially known coefficients of the disturbances and references. This makes a tracking error‐based observer easily designed for the nominal partial differential equation‐ordinary differential equation (PDE‐ODE) system. Observer‐based robust controls are then designed for the nominal beam system and further proved to guarantee the asymptotic convergence of the tracking errors and the boundedness of the states, although under unknown disturbances and references. Two simulation examples are provided to describe the effectiveness of the controls.