Dynamics and Control

At the end of this course, the students should be able to: 1. explain the implication of vibration in automotive engineering; and 2. and the significance of its control.

Dynamic systems are found everywhere, from musical instruments to transportation vehicles such as automobiles and aircraft. Even static civil structures such as bridges and buildings exhibit a dynamic response, which must be considered during design and construction of such systems. This course introduces the fundamental concepts of vibrating dynamical systems, from single degree of freedom systems through to continuous and multi-degree of freedom systems. Design of vibration control devices, such as vibration isolators and vibration absorbers, is also considered. Concurrently with the introduction to vibratory systems described above, this course also addresses how to control such dynamic systems using modern state-space control. This involves time domain descriptions of dynamic systems using state-space system models. The characteristics responsible for the dynamic response (poles, zeros, eigenvalues) are presented. Control laws using state-space are introduced, including specification of controller characteristics, controller design using pole placement and optimal (LQR) control (introduction). State observers are presented, including observer design using both pole placement and optimal (Kalman) observers (introduction). Finally, a computer aided control system design methodology is applied to a real MIMO aerospace platform and several other unstable MIMO systems.