The Concept of Stability 1

The Concept of Stability
If a system has the property that it will get back into the equilibrium state again
after moving away from its equilibrium state, then it is stable.
Stability of an un-excited system

A system is stable if after removing it from its equilibrium state and allowing it
to move freely, it returns to its original state. If the system moves away from its
original state, its behavior is unstable. The system is on the boundary of stability
and unstability if after removal from the equilibrium state it does not return to it,
but remains in its close vicinity, which depends on the extent of the removal
(e.g. it makes un-damped oscillations with bounded amplitude around the initial
state).
Stability of an excited system
A system is stable if it responds to any bounded input signal with a bounded
output signal, from any initial condition. Stability of the excited system is called
Bounded- Input–Bounded-Output (BIBO) stability.
For linear systems, stability is a system property. Stability does not depend on
the magnitude of the excitation. Additionally, for linear systems, if the un-
excited system is stable, then the excited system is also stable. Stability can be
checked unambiguously from the system response to a simple input signal.
Stability of the Closed-Loop System

Negative feedback, which is the basic structure of a closed-loop control system,
also involves the risk of instability. To demonstrate this let us consider the
control loop shown in Fig. .
Assuming a step-like abrupt change of the reference signal, the output signal
starts to grow from zero. Then the error signal decreases starting from an initial
value of 1. If the gain of the controller is high, first a large input signal appears
at the plant input, which results in a sharp rise in the output signal. The
dynamics of this change is determined by the dynamics of the process P and the
controller C, i.e., by the gains and the time constants of the corresponding
transfer functions. When the output signal reaches its required value, viz., the
one prescribed by the reference signal, the error signal reaches zero. But
because of the inertia of the system, the signals will not be settled immediately
at their required values, but maintaining their trend they will continue changing
further, according to their actual slope. If the output signal exceeds its
prescribed value, the error signal becomes negative, and after a while the output
signal will start decreasing. With large time constants of the process and high
gains of the controller, the overshoot may be significant. Steady or increasing
oscillations may appear in the control system. The problem of stability emerges
because the system uses the information supplied by the error signal in a
delayed manner, and if the gains are high, during the delay time the output
signal “runs away” so much that the control system will not be able to bring it
back to its required value. The parameters of the controller always have to be
chosen in such a way that the control system is stable
Analytical Stability Criteria

Stability can be decided from the location of the roots of the characteristic
equation which are the poles of the closed-loop system. Where a closed-loop
control system is stable if all of its poles lie in the left half-plane of the complex
plane. If any of the poles lies in the right half-plane, the system is unstable.
Stability Analysis Using the ROUTH Scheme

The length of the rows is decreasing. If the degree of the characteristic
polynomial is n, the scheme consists of n+1 rows. The arrangement given by the
ROUTH scheme.
A system is stable if all the coefficients of its characteristic equation are
positive and all the elements of the first column of its ROUTH scheme are
positive. If not all the elements in the first column are positive, the system is
unstable, and the number of the changes in the signs gives the number of
poles of the closed-loop system that lie in the right half-plane. A zero in the
first column indicates that the characteristic equation has a root on the
imaginary axis. In this case, the scheme can be continued by taking an
arbitrarily small e value instead of zero.
ii) Suppose the loop transfer function of a control circuit is:
K
G ( s )=
s (1+ s)(1+5 s )
In a closed-loop circuit, a unit negative feedback is applied.
i. Determine the value of the critical gain K that brings the control system
to the stability limit using Routh Scheme.

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The Concept of Stability 1

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The Concept of Stability

Stability of an un-excited system

Stability of the Closed-Loop System

Analytical Stability Criteria

Stability Analysis Using the ROUTH Scheme

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