Efficient reorientation of a deformable body in space: A free-free beam example

It is demonstrated that the planar reorientation of a free-free beam in zero gravity space can be accomplished by periodically changing the shape of the beam using internal actuators. A control scheme is proposed in which electromechanical actuators excite the flexible motion of the beam so that it rotates in the desired manner with respect to a fixed inertial reference. The results can be viewed as an extension of previous work to a distributed parameter case.