Locomotion of a flexible rack feeder consisting of two viscoelastic beams clumped on a mobile carriage are studied. The optimal control problem is to move the rack feeder from its initial state to terminal one in a fixed time and to minimize the mean mechanical energy of the system. The solution of the problem is based on the method of integro-differential relations. 1 The statement of an optimal control problem for viscoelastic structure dynamicsThe method of integro-differential relations (MIDR) was proposed in [1] to design the optimal control of flexible structure motions. This technique is extended to modelling and optimization of a rack feeder system with distributed parameters, which has already been considered by using an alternative representation in [2], where the system parameters are given. The experimental setup, built up at the Chair of Mechatronics of the University of Rostock, represents the structure of typical rack feeders as shown in Fig. 1. The structure consists of two identical beams clamped to a movable carriage. Both beams are rigidly connected at their tips by a pulley block, which is necessary for the positioning of a cage. In addition, the beams are coupled hingedly by means of two rigid rods. The driver force applied to the carriage is the control input of the structure.The projection approach is based on an integro-differential formulation [3] for the initial-boundary value problem of structure motions with the constitutive relations generalized in the dimensionless form according tow(0, y) = w 0 (y) and p(0, y) = p 0 (y) ; A a w(t, a) + B a s(t, a) = u(t)c a + f a (t) with a ∈ {0, 1} .Here t denotes the time and y is the common coordinate for each structure element. The function w(t, y) ∈ R n is generalizes displacements, p(t, y) ∈ R n is the generalized momentum density, and s(t, y) ∈ R n is the generalized forces. The functions v(t, y) ∈ R n and r(t, y) ∈ R n are arbitrarily chosen virtual velocities and displacements. The constitutive vector-functions q := p − M · w t and g := s − K · Dw − R · Dw t of t and y are introduced. The components of the operators D and D are [D] i,j = δ i,j ∂ α /∂y α and [D] i,j = (−1) α+1 δ i,j ∂ α /∂y α with α = 2 for i ≤ m (lateral motions) and α = 1 for i > m (longitudinal and torsional motions). The mass, stiffness, and damping matrices M(y), K(y), R(y) include structural parameters. The functions w 0 (y) and p 0 (y) define the initial state. The form of the linear operators A a and B a depends on the boundary and interelement conditions. The function u(t) ∈ R is the control input, c a ∈ R m+n is the input vector with the number m ≤ n of the lateral degrees of freedom, f (t, y) ∈ R n and f a (t) ∈ R m+n are the functions of external disturbances.The control objective is to move the structure to a desired state in a given time interval T and to minimize the cost functionsubject to the constraints w(T, y) = w 1 (y) and p(T, y) = p 1 (y). The equation of the carriage driver is τv(t) = u(t) − v(t), where v(t) is the carriage velocity, γ ≥ 0 is the weig...