Lectures on Control Systems Engineering

Control Systems Engineering Course

Control systems engineering has many applications in Mechatronics, Robotics, Electrical and Mechanical engineering. This Udemy course could be useful for both graduate and undergraduate students of these disciplines who want to clear some concepts of control systems.

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Prerequisites:

You must be familiar and have some knowledge of at least these subject areas:

1. Differential Equations

2. Laplace Transform

3. Partial Fractions

4. Kirchoff’s laws

5. High School Algebra

6. Matrices

I have added a 30 minute lecture on Laplace Transform, a similar lecture on partial fractions and might add one lecture about differential equations if you give me some feedback, but if you don't know high school algebra or not familiar with basic laws of physics, then I am afraid, I won't be able to help you with that.

What topics are covered in this Course

This course covers a very broad range of topics on control systems engineering. In the beginning you will learn about the basic terminology used in the field. This includes system, modelling, input, output, techniques for modelling dynamic systems such as differential equations, transfer functions, state space equations and block diagrams. Also what are linear time invariant (LTI) control systems and how to check. What are open and closed loop control systems. These topics are covered in subjects which have slightly varying names such as “linear control system”, “feedback control system” or simply the “control systems engineering”. All these refer to essentially the same topics. Most of these topics are covered in this course.

Finding Transfer Function:

You will also see examples of open loop and closed loop feedback control systems. You will also learn how to get a transfer function of various components and what are some of the properties of transfer function.

Stability:

Stability of a control system is of prime importance. We present two definitions of stability, the Asymptotic stability and the Bounded input Bounded Output (BIBO) stability. You will also learn how pole locations affect the stability of a system. What is multiplicity of poles on the imaginary axis and how it changes a marginally stable system to an unstable control system. A dedicated video is available on stability but stability has been discussed at various places throughout this course on control systems engineering.

Block Diagram Reduction:

Another important part of learning control systems is how to reduce a block diagram in its simplest form. This is an important part of this subject and there are few lectures dedicated to block diagram reduction techniques. In these lectures you will learn various familiar forms of block diagrams and rules for the reduction of these diagrams. The familiar forms include the cascade or series block diagram, parallel block diagram and feedback loop. In rules you will learn how to move a block to the right or left of a summing point, how to move a block to the right or left of a pick-off point etc.

Time Response of First order & Second Order control Systems:

There are many lectures on finding the time response of first order and second order control systems. This is one of the fundamental components of learning control systems engineering.

You will learn how to find the time response from a transfer function. How to use poles and zeros to determine the response of a control system. Also finding poles and zeros from the transfer function. What pole will generate what type of response. You can estimate the form of the time response by looking at the poles in a transfer function. Also time constant of first order system and how it can be used for system identification. Also you will learn some terms such as “rise time”, “settling time”, “overshoot”, “natural frequency”, “damping ratio” etc. You will also learn the types of second order system and how can you find it by looking at the roots of the characteristic polynomial of the system. Also what is the difference between the underdamped, overdamped, critically damped and undamped time responses of a control system. We will also look into the performance parameters also called the design parameters of a control system. You will also learn about the forced and the natural response of a control system.

Frequency Response & Bode Plot:

In the steady state, if we apply a sinusoidal input to a linear system, we will get the sinusoidal output response of the same frequency. However the amplitude and phase will change. There are few lectures on frequency response of control systems. You will learn the importance and how to plot Bode plot of a control system in order to find the frequency response of the system. You will also learn the analytical expressions for the frequency response.

Nyquist Stability Criterion:

The Nyquist criterion relates the stability of a closed-loop system to the open-loop frequency response and open-loop pole location. Therefore our knowledge of the open-loop system’s frequency response yields information about the stability of the closed loop system. There is a lecture on Nyquist criterion in which I tried to explain the concept without doing a lot of Mathematics. This will help you understand the concept. You will learn the mapping of complex numbers and some associated concepts.