436-401 Control of Mechanical Systems

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Objectives:

On completion of this subject, students should be able to:

• understand the concepts of state space control and estimation;

• obtain state-space realisations of systems in several canonical forms and assess their stability, controllability and observability;

• design a state feedback control law and a state estimator to achieve desired closed-loop response characteristics;

• design simple digital controllers for single-input single-output systems using classical and state-space methods;

• demonstrate familiarity with the structure, components and programming of practical controllers, and the effects of sampling rate and amplitude quantisation.

Content:

State-space design: Analysis: representation, transformations, canonical forms; solution of state-space equations; stability, controllability, observability. Design: pole-placement design of controllers and state estimators; comparison with classical control design. Digital control theory: sampling theory, z-transforms, time- and z-domain analysis; bilinear transformation and frequency domain design; root locus design in z-plane; PID control; pole placement design using state-space and polynomial methods. Control technology: Digital control system hardware and real-time software development, implementing control loops with PCs and PLCs. Case studies: detailed examination of digital control issues for a representative mechanical engineering system, such as a fuel injection controller.

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