Assignment Marks: 30 Modern Control Systems Final Assignment
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY BANGLADESH
DEPARTMENT OF EEE/CoE, FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
MODERN CONTROL SYSTEMS
FINAL ASSIGNMENT
Analysis of the Pitch Control System for an Unmanned Free-Swimming Submersible Vehicle
In this assignment you will analyze the performance of the pitch control system used in unmanned
free-swimming submersible vehicles. The depth of the vehicle is controlled as follows. During forward
motion an elevator surface on the vehicle is deflected by a selected amount. The deflection causes the
vehicle to rotate about the pitch axis. The pitch of the axis creates a vertical force that causes the vehicle
to submerge or rise.
The pitch control system is to ensure that the pitch angle of the vehicle tracks the pitch command
angle. The quality of tracking process is controlled by the pitch control system which will be described
below. The objective of this assignment is to analyze performance of this control system.
In the first part of the assignment, you will learn about the effect of zero-pole cancellation, when
poles and zeros of the system cancel out each other and thus have a negligible effect on the system
performance. Although it is regarded as a nuisance in some situations, in this problem zero-pole
cancellation allows us to work with a simplified vehicle model.
In the second part of the assignment, you will investigate transient performance of second order
closed loop control systems controlled by means of a proportional controller. In the third part of the
assignment, you will analyze the affect of additional non-dominant real poles on performance of
proportional control systems.
The vehicle model:
The parameter β indicates the variation on the plant parameters. Use β = 1.00 for this
configurations.
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Figure 1: Pitch control loop for the unmanned free-swimming submersible vehicle.
The elevator actuator:
The elevator actuator receives the commanded elevator de_ection angle δe;com and positions the elevator
surface accordingly, at an angle δe. Ideally, one should have δe = δe;com, however the actuator is not an
ideal device and have a limited bandwidth. Therefore, the relation between δe;com and δe is characterized
in terms of a low pass filter, which has the transfer function
The pitch control system:
The pitch control system includes the pitch gain compensator (controller) (-K) and the pitch rate
sensor. The sensor is essentially a differentiator that produces the pitch rate from pitch measurements; it
is represented by a transfer function Kss. In this assignment, we will assume that the pitch rate sensor is
disabled, i.e., Ks = 0, and the controller uses only the pitch gain (-K). By selecting the value for K,
properties of the system can be changed.
Note the sign “-” of the compensator; see Figure 1. This sign is to counter the sign “-” of the
vehicle dynamics transfer function; see (1) and (2). This is necessary to avoid occurrence of positive
feedback in the system.
DESIGN REQUIREMENTS:
Write the transfer function of the subsystems. Then, solve the overall transfer function of the
system. Use the given schematic parameters (β = 1.00) for this configurations, model the system.
Examine the system stability, steady-state response, and time response. Sketch the root locus for
the system. Now, model the Unmanned Free-swimming Submersible Pitch control system
without rate feedback (Ks=0) for the above configurations. Model the cascade compensations for
the above configuration to meet the following requirements:
(1) 20% overshoot, (2) 4-second settling time, (3) static error constant = 12.
You can take help from 'Case Study' portion at the end of chapter-4,7,8,9.
N.B: It is recommended to use MATLAB tools for your design and analysis.
Submit assignment on day-1 of final exam. Attach cover page and question paper.
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