Fundamentals of Control Systems

MEC4107S
A/prof Hennie Mouton, E-M building, Room 212.2, hennie.mouton@uct.ac.za **
Welcome to this Control course for mechanical and electro-mechanical 4th year engineering
students.
The overall content is given on the next page.
The purpose of the teaching is to rather give you a good understanding of the fundamentals of
Control Systems, than to teach you recipes that will anyway only work in standard cases.
Apart from the lectures, there will be homework and combined tutorial and computer lab sessions.
If you do and attend all of these, and make sure that you can eventually do all tasks correctly, there
is no reason why you shouldnt be able to ace this course, provided that you are able to redo all by
the time of the exam.
You will learn how to use a subset of the simulation language Simul_C_EM enough to be able to do
all homework and computer lab sessions where simulations are required. You can also download
Simul_C_EM on your own computers if you wish to do so. This is recommended.
The recommended textbook is Control Systems Engineering, 6th edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., by
Norman S Nise. It will be referred to a bit during the course, is a good book, will provide you with
the relevant background and plenty examples, might help a lot where my explanations are perhaps
not complete enough, it handles more topics than Im going to cover, but is not compulsory to buy
for this course. But a good book is never a waste and this one might be of good use for further
studies or to use once you are in a professional job. So I recommend the purchase thereof.
The main resource for this course will be the notes I plan to hand out as the lectures proceed. It is
strongly recommended that you put them in a proper file and bring your updated file (File of Control
Course notes) along to all the lectures and the tutorial and lab sessions.
** You are welcome to email me on course related stuff questions and comments, but Im not
necessarily going to answer you personally because I might want to address the particular matter in
the whole class (without mentioning your name unless it is a particular bright remark that I would
like to give you credit for, but then with your permission).

Contents
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20.

Basic control loops, benefits of feedback, transfer functions

Block diagram algebra
Laplace (s-) transforms
z-transforms
Accurate and approximate s-z relations
Simulations
Delays in control loops, compensators, noise and filters
Bandwidth, Time constant, Gain and Phase revisited
Importance and meaning of poles and zeros analyses and demonstration by
simulation
Root Locus analysis manual calculations and sketching, computer generation
Bode Plot analysis and design, open loop, closed loop
Optimal compensator positions and summary of Bode plot design technique
From analogue to digital revision and expansion
From digital to implementation difference equations
Bode Plot design digital/analogue mixed
Quantization effects, stiction/friction and noise
Noise filtering, especially anti-aliasing
Scaling
Modeling of DC motors, gearboxes and sensors
Examples of complete systems specifying, modelling, simulation, design

Appendices
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
k.
l.
m.
n.
o.
p.
q.
r.
s.
t.

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60
61
67
79
90
124
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139
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151
169
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174

181

Creating a new simulation and executable in Simul_C_EM

Simul_C_EM: Time graphs or Frequency plots
Simul_C_EM: STEP, SINE, SQUARE, PULSE, PULSES, FMLINSWP & AMFMLINSWP
Simul_C_EM: DIFF & SUM
Simul_C_EM: GAIN
Simul_C_EM: LEADLAG & BIQUAD
Simul_C_EM: INTEGR & DERIV
Simul_C_EM: LIMIT
Simul_C_EM: DELAY
Simul_C_EM: SETSIGNAL & CREATESIGNAL
Simul_C_EM: GAUSSNOISE
Simul_C_EM: RMS
Simul_C_EM: STICTION & STICLIM
Simul_C_EM: A2D & D2A
Simul_C_EM: ZSTEP
Simul_C_EM: ZDIFF & ZSUM
Simul_C_EM: ZGAIN
Simul_C_EM: ZLEADLAG & ZBIQUAD
Simul_C_EM: ZLIMIT
Simul_C_EM: ZDELAY
2

u.
v.
w.
x.
y.

Simul_C_EM: ZSETSIGNAL & ZCREATESIGNAL

Simul_C_EM: ZRMS
Simul_C_EM: YTDRAW
Simul_C_EM: BODECALC
Labview: Root Locus graph

1. Basic control loops, benefits of feedback, transfer functions

Further reading: Control Systems Engineering, Norman S Nise, pages 2-23
Why is knowledge of control systems needed in engineering?
Because most of the most important technological devices in modern society have control systems
at the heart of their functioning.
Examples are:
Remote control of gates, garage doors etc.
Speed and position control of lifts
Temperature control of ovens and freezers
Temperature control in air-conditioning
Speed control of motorcars
Very accurate position control of CNC machines
Height, speed and various other controls in aircraft and spacecraft
Control in power generation for supplying constant voltage in spite of varying demands (of
course this can fail catastrophically if proper planning has been missing for years)
Etc.
A block diagram of a basic control loop can be drawn as follows:

It consists of:
A control input commanding the output via the control loop to follow the input
A feedback signal which is an indication (normally a measurement and some signal
conditioning like filtering) of what the output is
A comparator giving the difference between the input and the feedback, providing the socalled error signal
A controller and compensators, providing the input to the power elements, and determining
the stability and performance of the control loop
The power elements (like an amplifier, motor or pump), driving the plant
The plant, which is the hardware capable of executing some process
Measurements being done by sensors, most importantly of the output to be controlled
Signal conditioning (normally filtering) of the measurement, providing the feedback
Note that the fact of feedback is what makes this control system a closed loop control system.
Without feedback, it would have been open loop control, which can also be useful in many cases,
but is not nearly as robust to control systems in general as closed loop control. Therefore all control
system courses have closed loop control as their main focus.

You will often find this in the notes that I put text or formulas in blocks, like above. These are the
things that you must memorize.
Different types of control loops can be found, controlling different outputs, and with different
degrees of complexity.

A typical position loop:

In this case the position is fed back.

J = mass or inertia
1
An integral can be represented by Laplaces definition of s, as .
The reason for this will be given in chapters to follow.
1
1
In the meanwhile make a mental note: = , thus an integral is represented by
Also:

= , thus a derivative is represented by

A typical rate (or speed) loop:

In this case the speed is fed back.

A control loop with inner and outer loops:

Such loops are quite common.

Even in the simple position loop shown before, there might be current feedback in the power
amplifier, which really is an inner loop in that system.
If the bandwidth of the inner loop is much higher than the bandwidth of the outer loop, the inner
loop can simply be considered as a fixed gain when designing the outer loop.
But decent simulation software like Simul_C_EM can anyway handle multiple loops like this and
even much more complicated loops.
In such loops, the outer loop is determining what is controlled by the input in other words this
example is a position control loop.

Mixed analogue and digital loops:

A/D = Analogue to Digital convertor
D/A = Digital to Analogue convertor

* The comparator is getting the difference between the input and the feedback and must not be
confused with a logical comparator.
This comparator is digital (done in a micro-controller), but comparators can also be analogue, like
in the previous examples.

Our approach in digital control loop design:

In this course our approach will always be to first do an analogue control design.
Then the digital parts will be included by substituting the relevant analogue parts, for example the
comparator, controller, compensators and some filters.
Then the parameters, typically of the controller and compensators (including the gain), will be
adjusted to give the desired overall performance.

The reasons for feedback:

The reasons for feedback in control are that
it can reduce the effect of uncertainty and changes in power elements and plant gains
significantly (like the effect of different drags on aircraft at different heights causing
different thrust to speed gains), as well as
reduce the effects of disturbances (like the effect of changing winds in speed control of
aircraft).
The first reason can be demonstrated by the following:

First, derive the transfer function

0
1

From the block diagram:

(1 0 ) = 0

1 = 0 (1 + )

0
=

=
1 1 + +

If K is large, such that KAP is much bigger than s, then:

0
/
=1
1
This will be true even though A and P may vary significantly, for example because of the effects of
temperature on friction, gains in the power elements and in the plant. So the overall gain will
remain 1 even though certain parameters in the system may vary a lot.
Without feedback, one could have tried the following to also get

0
1

= 1:

The basic idea is straightforward add the inverse of in series with and
Then

0
1

= = 1, if A = A and P = P .

But A and P are often not well known or constant under varying conditions, therefore will often
not be the constant of 1.
(Dont worry for now about the meaning of s the s above and below the line will anyway cancel
perfectly in this example.)
Transfer functions, like

0
,
1

are often written as

0
(),
1

indicating that they are functions of s .

7

Examples:

In this case G by itself is a function of s.

Own work:

Derive

Answer:

0
()
1

Own work:

Derive

Answer:

0
()
1

Own work:

Derive

0
()
1

()

= 1+().

0
()
1

.()

= 1+().

() and 0 ()
1
2

Answers:

0
()
1

.().()

= 1+().().

and

0
()
2

()

= 1+().().

Learn this pattern so that you can see what the transfer functions are by simply inspecting the block
diagrams.
This is not easy for complicated diagrams, but for these fairly simple ones, it is quite straightforward.
Masons rules can be applied in complicated cases, unless one wants to do the derivations from
basics, but his rules are not treated in this course.
In the last case V2 can be representing a disturbance, and the job of the feedback will also be to
reduce the effect of the disturbance on the output V0 .

This can easily be seen by considering a large G(s) in the equation for 0 () the larger G(s), the
smaller V0 due to V2 , in other words the less effect 2 has on 0 .

Open loop gain may not be too high:

The Open loop transfer function is the transfer function from a to b in this diagram.
Therefore it is G(s)H(s).
The Open loop gain is the gain of the Open loop transfer function at a specific frequency. You will
later be shown how to convert s to frequency.
The Open loop transfer function is the transfer function from one point back to the same point (for
example from a to a ) around the loop, except for omitting one comparator (thus effectively from a
to b ). Otherwise it can also be seen as the negative of the transfer function from one point back to
the same point around the loop. It is very important that you familiarize yourself with one of these
rules so that you can determine the Open loop transfer function correctly.

Making the Open loop gain very high is beneficial in terms of reducing the influence of power
element and plant gain variations, but it should not be too high.
If it is too high, the control loop will become unstable.
In principle this is what control design is about to design feedback control loops
* so that the output can follow the input with a stable response, and
* so that factors like power element and plant gain variations, and external disturbances, have small
enough effects.

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