To date, I have taught ECE4510 three times, and ECE4510/5510 once (the conversion to a mezzanine course was made in the Spring of 2005). The lecture materials for this course are my own, with some adaptations of notes I took while a student at Stanford University. Some features of these notes include:   An introduction section giving an intuitive understanding of control; definitions, applications, the issues involved and some possible solution mechanisms (section 1).   A review of dynamic modeling of systems in terms of differential equations (section 2). After the first year of teaching this course, I removed all state-variable references from this section and moved them later in the course. This has reduced confusion as only one paradigm is studied at a time.   A section on dynamic response (section 3), explaining how we can infer time-domain performance from a transfer function. The student need not perform tedious partial-fraction expansion (etc) to convert Laplace to time-domain any longer!   Sections describing how feedback improves performance (sections 4 and 5). Examples, and simple control-design methods.   Sections describing how to sketch root-locus plots, and how to use them to design controllers (sections 6 and 7).   Sections describing how to sketch Bode and Nyquist plots, and use them in design (sections 8 and 9). After the first year, I reworked these sections entirely to improve clarity.   A section on state-variable analysis and controller design (section 10), and a section reviewing the entire course (section 11).   I typeset the lecture notes.

View the ECE4510 Course Reader (234 pages; Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader–only available on CD-ROM dossier)

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