Abstract.We study the dynamic behavior and stability of two connected Rayleigh beams that are subject to, in addition to two sensors and two actuators applied at the joint point, one of the actuators also specially distributed along the beams. We show that with the distributed control employed, there is a set of generalized eigenfunctions of the closed-loop system, which forms a Riesz basis with parenthesis for the state space. Then both the spectrum-determined growth condition and exponential stability are concluded for the system. Moreover, we show that the exponential stability is independent of the location of the joint. The range of the feedback gains that guarantee the system to be exponentially stable is identified.Mathematics Subject Classification. 93C20, 93C25, 35J10, 47E05