1. Aims of Control Systems Analysis and Design

1.1 Analysis

  • Objectives: Determination of the following system characteristics:

    • degree and extent of system stability

    • steady-state (d-c) performance (accuracy)

    • transient performance

  • Methods of analysis

    • determine differential equations or transfer functions for each component

    • choose suitable representation, e.g. block diagram

    • formulate system model by connecting components together

    • determine system response.

    For the latter there are several methods used:

    • Direct solution to find steady-state and transient solutions. (Difficult with high order systems – relative stability difficult to study in time domain)

    • Four graphical methods (described in Section 2)

      • Root locus

      • Bode diagram

      • Nyquist diagram

      • Nichols chart

      (The last three are all frequency response methods)

1.2 Design Objectives

To meet performance specifications. Performance specifications are constraints on the system characteristics which are a number of ways of specifying these constraints. These fall into two broad classes

  • Time domain criteria

  • Frequency domain criteria

The required response is prescribed in either or both forms. In general, the constraints define:

  • speed of response

  • relative stability

  • system accuracy or allowable error.

These are described in Section 4.