Control is used to modify the behavior of a system so it behaves in a specific desirable way over time. For example, we may want the speed of a car on the highway to remain as close as possible to 60 miles per hour in spite of possible hills or adverse wind; or we may want an aircraft to follow a desired altitude, heading, and velocity profile independent of wind gusts; or we may want the temperature and pressure in a reactor vessel in a chemical process plant to be maintained at desired levels. All these are being accomplished today by control methods and the above are examples of what automatic control systems are designed to do, without human intervention. Control is used whenever quantities such as speed, altitude, temperature, or voltage must be made to behave in some desirable way over time.

This section provides an introduction to control system design methods. D.C.

In This Section:

On the CD-ROM:

A Brief Review of the Laplace Transform Useful in Control Systems, by the authors of this section, examines its usefulness in control systems analysis and design.

INTRODUCTION

To gain some insight into how an automatic control system operates we shall briefly examine the speed control mechanism in a car.

It is perhaps instructive to consider first how a typical driver may control the car speed over uneven terrain. The driver, by carefully observing the speedometer, and appropriately increasing or decreasing...