chapters.
In Chapter 1, the essential ideas of feedback and some of the key design issues are introduced. This chapter also
contains a brief history of control, from the ancient beginnings of process control to flight control and electronic
feedback amplifiers. It is hoped that this brief history will give a context for the field, introduce some of the key
figures who contributed to its development, and provide motivation to the student for the studies to come.
Chapter 2 is a short presentation of dynamic modeling and includes mechanical, electrical, electromechanical,
fluid, and thermodynamic devices. This material can be omitted, used as the basis of review homework to smooth
out the usual nonuniform preparation of students, or covered in-depth depending on the needs of the students.
Chapter 3 covers dynamic response as used in control. Again, much of this material may have been covered
previously, especially by electrical engineering students. For many students, the correlation between pole locations
and transient response and the effects of extra zeros and poles on dynamic response represent new material. Stability
of dynamic systems is also introduced in this Chapter. This material needs to be covered carefully.
Chapter 4 presents the basic equations and transfer functions of feedback along with the definitions of the
sensitivity function. With these tools, open-loop and closed-loop control are compared with respect to disturbance
rejection, tracking accuracy, and sensitivity to model errors. Classification of systems according to their ability to track
polynomial reference signals or to reject polynomial disturbances is described with the concept of system type.
Finally, the classical proportional, integral, and derivative (PID) control structure is introduced and the influence of
the controller parameters on a system’s characteristic equation is explored along with PID tuning methods. The end-
of-chapter optional section treats digital control.
Following the overview of feedback in Chapter 4, the core of the book presents the design methods based on root
locus, frequency response, and state-variable feedback in Chapters 5, 6, and 7, respectively.
Chapter 8 develops in more detail the tools needed to design feedback control for implementation in a digital
computer. However, for a complete treatment of feedback control using digital computers, the reader is referred to
the companion text,Digital Control of Dynamic Systems, by Franklin, Powell, and Workman; Ellis-Kagle Press, 1998.
In Chapter 9 the nonlinear material includes techniques for the linearization of equations of motion, analysis of
zero memory nonlinearity as a variable gain, frequency response as a describing function, the phase plane, Lyapunov
stability theory, and the circle stability criterion.
In Chapter 10 the three primary approaches are integrated in several case studies and a framework for design is
described that includes a touch of the real-world context of practical control design.
Course Configurations
The material in this text can be covered flexibly. Most first-course students in controls will have some dynamics and
Laplace transforms. Therefore, Chapter 2 and most of Chapter 3 would be a review for those students. In a ten-week
quarter, it is possible to review Chapter 3, and all of Chapters 1, 4, 5, and 6. Most boxed sections should be omitted.
In the second quarter, Chapters 7, and 9 can be covered comfortably including the boxed sections. Alternatively,
some boxed sections could be omitted and selected portions of Chapter 8 included. A semester course should
comfortably accommodate Chapters 1-7, including the review material of Chapters 2 and 3, if needed. If time
remains after this core coverage, some introduction of digital control from Chapter 8, selected nonlinear issues from
Chapter 9 and some of the case studies from Chapter 10 may be added.
The entire book can also be used for a three-quarter sequence of courses consisting of modeling and dynamic