Environment and Methods for Robust Computer Aided Control Systems Design for Nonlinear Plants

Abstract A general software environment and a control system design approach for multivariable nonlinear plants are motivated and developed. The software environment recognizes the iterative nature of the design process and completely automates it; it is described in functional terms, as viewed by the control system designer. The design method is based on recent breakthroughs in describing function theory that uses a modern algebraic problem formulation to remove all previous nonlinear system restrictions: one may deal with plants having any number of nonlinearities, in any configuration, and of any type, including multiple input nonlinearities, and arrive at quasilinear models of the plant that will serve as a realistic basis for control system design.