The slewed beam experiment was designed to allow a flexible beam to be slewed perpendicular to the beam axis. The experiment consists of a flexible beam assembly mounted on a cart which is moved along a track by a motor. Coupled to the motor is a potentiometer to measure the displacement of the cart and a drive pulley. The flexible beam assembly consists of a second motor and potentiometer and beam clamp assembly coupled along the axis of rotation of the motor. The second potentiometer is used to measure the beam angle. Two accelerometers can be mounted on the beam to measure the beam's deflection at various points along the axis. The system is a multi-input multi-output system with the cart position, beam angle, and beam deflection as outputs and the control signals for the two motors as inputs. The control objective for this experiment is to move the cart to some specified position, position the beam perpendicular to the cart motion, and quickly dampen the oscillations in the beam. This system can be used to study both position control and vibration suppression.

The configuration of the controller and system are shown below.