ENME461: Control Systems Laboratory

Credits: 3

Description

Prerequisite: ENME351 and ENME361.
Restriction: Permission of ENGR-Mechanical Engineering department.
Credit only granted for: ENEE461 or ENME461.
Students will design, implement, and test controllers for a variety of systems. This will enhance their understanding of feedback control familiarize them with the characteristics and limitations of real control devices. Students will also complete a small project. This will entail writing a proposal, purchasing parts for their controller, building the system, testing it, and writing a final report describing what they have done.Cross-listed with ENEE461. Credit offered for ENME461 or ENEE461.

Semesters Offered

Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025
Testudo

Learning Objectives

  • Understand the design and implementation of control systems for single-input single-output linear time-invariant systems.
  • Understand and be able to use the laboratory techniques, tools, and practices of control engineering.
  • Be able to report the results of their work in the laboratory accurately, in appropriate detail, and concisely.
  • Be able to specify components, implement a control systems, test and debug it,  and appropriately report the results of a control design project.

 

Topics Covered

  • PID Control
  • Lead/Lag controller design
  • Modeling and identification of linear time-invariant systems
  • Implementation of control systems in a computer
  • Saturation and other nonlinearities in control systems.
  • Techniques for understanding the effects of nonlinearity and compensating for it.
  • The linear quadratic optimal regulator.
  • Switching controllers.

 

Additional Course Information

Description 

The course consists of two parts.  The first part is a conventional undergraduate laboratory course in which the students perform a series of five experiments in controls.  The experiments are progressively more difficult.  Each experiment ends with a written report.

In the second part of the course the students do a control project.  The projects are done by teams of two.  The students must submit a pre-proposal, a proposal, and a final report as part of their project. 

Laboratory experiments are aimed at elucidating the principles governing feedback control systems and providing familiarity with the characteristics and limitations of real control devices. Students will design, build and test digital servomechanisms, and will conduct analog and hybrid computer simulations of computer-controlled and distributed systems.

Matlab and Simulink will be used to design, test and implement control algorithms for a variety of experiments, including control of a system with significant delay, a mechanical positioning system, and other simple control systems.

Students will be expected to work in small teams and complete a final project in which they design and implement a digital networked control system.

Grading will be based on weekly laboratory assignments, midterm exam and final project.

Textbook 

Hristu-Varsekalis, D, and Levine, W.S. (eds.), “Handbook of networked and embedded control systems,” Birkhauser, 2006  (recommended)

Class/Laboratory Schedule 

  • Two 50 minute lectures and one 180 minute lab per week
Last Updated By 
Jessica Stein, June 2017