Control engineering

Control engineering or control systems engineering is an

engineering discipline that applies automatic control theory to
design systems with desired behaviors in control
environments.[1] The discipline of controls overlaps and is
usually taught along with electrical engineering at many
institutions around the world.[1]

The practice uses sensors and detectors to measure the output

performance of the process being controlled; these measurements
are used to provide corrective feedback helping to achieve the
desired performance. Systems designed to perform without
requiring human input are called automatic control systems (such
as cruise control for regulating the speed of a car). Multi-
disciplinary in nature, control systems engineering activities
focus on implementation of control systems mainly derived by Control systems play a critical role inspace flight
mathematical modelingof a diverse range of systems.

Contents
Overview
History
Control theory
Control systems
Control engineering education
Recent advancement
See also
References
Further reading
External links

Overview
Modern day control engineering is a relatively new field of study that gained significant attention during the 20th century with the
advancement of technology. It can be broadly defined or classified as practical application of control theory. Control engineering has
an essential role in a wide range of control systems, from simple household washing machines to high-performance F-16 fighter
aircraft. It seeks to understand physical systems, using mathematical modelling, in terms of inputs, outputs and various components
with different behaviors; use control systems design tools to develop controllers for those systems; and implement controllers in
physical systems employing available technology
. A system can be mechanical, electrical, fluid, chemical, financial or biological, and
the mathematical modelling, analysis and controller design uses control theory in one or many of the time, frequency and complex-s
domains, depending on the nature of the design problem.

History
Automatic control systems were first developed over two thousand years ago. The
first feedback control device on record is thought to be the ancient Ktesibios's water
clock in Alexandria, Egypt around the third century B.C.E. It kept time by regulating
the water level in a vessel and, therefore, the water flow from that vessel. This
certainly was a successful device as water clocks of similar design were still being
made in Baghdad when the Mongols captured the city in 1258 A.D. A variety of
automatic devices have been used over the centuries to accomplish useful tasks or
simply just to entertain. The latter includes the automata, popular in Europe in the
17th and 18th centuries, featuring dancing figures that would repeat the same task
over and over again; these automata are examples of open-loop control. Milestones
among feedback, or "closed-loop" automatic control devices, include the
temperature regulator of a furnace attributed to Drebbel, circa 1620, and the
centrifugal flyball governor used for regulating the speed of steam engines by James
Watt in 1788.

In his 1868 paper "On Governors", James Clerk Maxwell was able to explain Control of fractionating columns is
instabilities exhibited by the flyball governor using differential equations to describe one of the more challenging
applications
the control system. This demonstrated the importance and usefulness of
mathematical models and methods in understanding complex phenomena, and it
signaled the beginning of mathematical control and systems theory. Elements of control theory had appeared earlier but not as
dramatically and convincingly as in Maxwell's analysis.

Control theory made significant strides over the next century. New mathematical techniques, as well as advancements in electronic
and computer technologies, made it possible to control significantly more complex dynamical systems than the original flyball
governor could stabilize. New mathematical techniques included developments in optimal control in the 1950s and 1960s followed
by progress in stochastic, robust, adaptive, nonlinear, control methods in the 1970s and 1980s. Applications of control methodology
have helped to make possible space travel and communication satellites, safer and more efficient aircraft, cleaner automobile engines,
and cleaner and more efficient chemical processes.

Before it emerged as a unique discipline, control engineering was practiced as a part of mechanical engineering and control theory
was studied as a part of electrical engineering since electrical circuits can often be easily described using control theory techniques.
In the very first control relationships, a current output was represented by a voltage control input. However, not having adequate
technology to implement electrical control systems, designers were left with the option of less efficient and slow responding
mechanical systems. A very effective mechanical controller that is still widely used in some hydro plants is the governor. Later on,
previous to modern power electronics, process control systems for industrial applications were devised by mechanical engineers
using pneumatic and hydraulic control devices, many of which are still in use today
.

Control theory
There are two major divisions in control theory, namely, classical and modern, which have direct implications for the control
engineering applications. The scope of classical control theory is limited to single-input and single-output (SISO) system design,
except when analyzing for disturbance rejection using a second input. The system analysis is carried out in the time domain using
differential equations, in the complex-s domain with the Laplace transform, or in the frequency domain by transforming from the
complex-s domain. Many systems may be assumed to have a second order and single variable system response in the time domain. A
controller designed using classical theory often requires on-site tuning due to incorrect design approximations. Yet, due to the easier
physical implementation of classical controller designs as compared to systems designed using modern control theory, these
controllers are preferred in most industrial applications. The most common controllers designed using classical control theory are
PID
controllers. A less common implementation may include either or both a Lead or Lag filter. The ultimate end goal is to meet
requirements typically provided in the time-domain called the step response, or at times in the frequency domain called the open-loop
response. The step response characteristics applied in a specification are typically percent overshoot, settling time, etc. The open-loop
response characteristics applied in a specification are typically Gain and Phase margin and bandwidth. These characteristics may be
evaluated through simulation including a dynamic model of the system under control coupled with the compensation model.

In contrast, modern control theory is carried out in the state space, and can deal with multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO)
systems. This overcomes the limitations of classical control theory in more sophisticated design problems, such as fighter aircraft
control, with the limitation that no frequency domain analysis is possible. In modern design, a system is represented to the greatest
advantage as a set of decoupled first order differential equations defined using state variables. Nonlinear, multivariable, adaptive and
robust control theories come under this division. Matrix methods are significantly limited for MIMO systems where linear
independence cannot be assured in the relationship between inputs and outputs. Being fairly new, modern control theory has many
areas yet to be explored. Scholars like Rudolf E. Kalman and Aleksandr Lyapunov are well-known among the people who have
shaped modern control theory.

Control systems
Control engineering is the engineering discipline that focuses on the modeling of a diverse range of dynamic systems (e.g.
mechanical systems) and the design of controllers that will cause these systems to behave in the desired manner. Although such
controllers need not be electrical, many are and hence control engineering is often viewed as a subfield of electrical engineering.
However, the falling price of microprocessors is making the actual implementation of a control system essentially trivial. As a result,
focus is shifting back to the mechanical and process engineering discipline, as intimate knowledge of the physical system being
controlled is often desired.

Electrical circuits, digital signal processors and microcontrollers can all be used to implement control systems. Control engineering
has a wide range of applications from the flight and propulsion systems of commercial airliners to the cruise control present in many
modern automobiles.

In most cases, control engineers utilize feedback when designing control systems. This is often accomplished using a PID controller
system. For example, in an automobile with cruise control the vehicle's speed is continuously monitored and fed back to the system,
which adjusts the motor's torque accordingly. Where there is regular feedback, control theory can be used to determine how the
system responds to such feedback. In practically all such systems stability is important and control theory can help ensure stability is
achieved.

Although feedback is an important aspect of control engineering, control engineers may also work on the control of systems without
feedback. This is known as open loop control. A classic example of open loop control is a washing machine that runs through a pre-
determined cycle without the use ofsensors.

Control engineering education

At many universities around the world, control engineering courses are taught primarily in electrical engineering and mechanical
engineering, but some courses can be instructed in mechatronics engineering, and aerospace engineering. In others, control
engineering is connected to computer science, as most control techniques today are implemented through computers, often as
embedded systems (as in the automotive field). The field of control within chemical engineering is often known as process control. It
deals primarily with the control of variables in a chemical process in a plant. It is taught as part of the undergraduate curriculum of
any chemical engineering program and employs many of the same principles in control engineering. Other engineering disciplines
also overlap with control engineering as it can be applied to any system for which a suitable model can be derived. However,
specialised control engineering departments do exist, for example, the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at
the University of Sheffield [2] and the Department of Systems Engineering at the United States Naval Academy
.[3]

Control engineering has diversified applications that include science, finance management, and even human behavior. Students of
control engineering may start with a linear control system course dealing with the time and complex-s domain, which requires a
thorough background in elementary mathematics and Laplace transform, called classical control theory. In linear control, the student
does frequency and time domain analysis. Digital control and nonlinear control courses require Z transformation and algebra
respectively, and could be said to complete a basic control education.

Recent advancement
Originally, control engineering was all about continuous systems. Development of computer control tools posed a requirement of
discrete control system engineering because the communications between the computer-based digital controller and the physical
system are governed by a computer clock. The equivalent to Laplace transform in the discrete domain is the Z-transform. Today,
many of the control systems are computer controlled and they consist of both digital and analog components.

Therefore, at the design stage either digital components are mapped into the continuous domain and the design is carried out in the
continuous domain, or analog components are mapped into discrete domain and design is carried out there. The first of these two
methods is more commonly encountered in practice because many industrial systems have many continuous systems components,
including mechanical, fluid, biological and analog electrical components, with a few digital controllers.

Similarly, the design technique has progressed from paper-and-ruler based manual design to computer-aided design and now to
computer-automated design or CAutoD which has been made possible by evolutionary computation. CAutoD can be applied not just
to tuning a predefined control scheme, but also to controller structure optimisation, system identification and invention of novel
[4][5]
control systems, based purely upon a performance requirement, independent of any specific control scheme.

Resilient control systems extend the traditional focus of addressing only planned disturbances to frameworks and attempt to address
multiple types of unexpected disturbance; in particular, adapting and transforming behaviors of the control system in response to
[6]
malicious actors, abnormal failure modes, undesirable human action, etc.

See also
Electrical engineering
Communications engineering
Satellite navigation
Outline of control engineering
Advanced process control
Building automation
Computer-automated design(CAutoD, CAutoCSD)
Control reconfiguration
Feedback
H-infinity
List of control engineering topics
Quantitative feedback theory
Robotic unicycle
State space
Sliding mode control
Systems engineering
Testing controller
VisSim
Control Engineering (magazine)
EICASLAB
Time series
Process control system
Robotic control
mechatronics

References
 1. "Systems & Control Engineering FAQ | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science"(https://engineering.case.edu/
eecs/node/213). engineering.case.edu. Case Western Reserve University. 20 November 2015. Retrieved 27 June
2017.
2. "ACSE - The University of Sheffield" (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/acse). Retrieved 17 March 2015.
3. "WRC Home" (http://www.usna.edu/WSE/). USNA Weapons and Systems Engineering. Retrieved 19 November
2014.
4. Tan, K.C. and Li, Y. (2001) Performance-based control system design automation via evolutionary computing.
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 14 (4). pp. 473-486.ISSN 0952-1976 (https://www.worldcat.org/sea
rch?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0952-1976), http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/3807/
5. Li, Y., et al. (2004). CAutoCSD - Evolutionary search and optimisation enabled computer automated control system
design. International Journal of Automation and Computing, 1(1). pp.76-88.ISSN 1751-8520 (https://www.worldcat.o
rg/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:1751-8520), http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/3818/
6. C. G. Rieger, D. I. Gertman and M. A. McQueen, "Resilient control systems: Next generation design research," 2009
2nd Conference on Human System Interactions, Catania, 2009, pp. 632-636.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5091051&isnumber=5090940

Further reading
Christopher Kilian (2005).Modern Control Technology. Thompson Delmar Learning.ISBN 978-1-4018-5806-3.
Bennett, Stuart (June 1986).A history of control engineering, 1800-1930. IET. ISBN 978-0-86341-047-5.
Bennett, Stuart (1993).A history of control engineering, 1930-1955. IET. ISBN 978-0-86341-299-8.
Arnold Zankl (2006). Milestones in Automation: From the Transistor to the Digital Factory. Wiley-VCH. ISBN 978-3-
89578-259-6.
Franklin, Gene F.; Powell, J. David; Emami-Naeini, Abbas (2014).Feedback control of dynamic systems(7th ed.).
Stanford Cali. U.S.: Pearson. p. 880.ISBN 9780133496598.

External links
Control Labs Worldwide
The Michigan Chemical Engineering Process Dynamics and Controls Openextbook T
Control System Integrators Association
List of control systems integrators
Institution of Mechanical Engineers - Mechatronics, Informatics and Control Group (MICG)
Systems Science & Control Engineering: An Open Access Journal

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