Contrl System.docVIP

Control System Main means by which a variable quantity or set of variable quantities is made to conform to a prescribed norm. It either holds the values of the controlled quantities constant or causes them to vary in a prescribed way. A control system may be operated by electricity, by mechanical means, by fluid pressure (liquid or gas), or by a combination of means. When a computer is involved in the control circuit, it is usually more convenient to operate all of the control systems electrically, although intermixtures are fairly common. Development of control systems. Control systems are intimately related to the concept of automation, but the two fundamental types of control systems, feedforward and feedback, have classic ancestry. The loom invented by Joseph Jacquard of France in 1801 is an early example of feedforward; a set of punched cards programmed the patterns woven by the loom; no information from the process was used to correct the machine’s operation. Similar feedforward control was incorporated in a number of machine tools invented in the 19th century, in which a cutting tool followed the shape of a model. Feedback control, in which information from the process is used to correct a machine’s operation, has an even older history. Roman engineers maintained water levels for their aqueduct system by means of floating valves that opened and closed at appropriate levels. The Dutch windmill of the 17th century was kept facing the wind by the action of an auxiliary vane that moved the entire upper part of the mill. The most famous example from the Industrial Revolution is James Watt’s flyball governor of 1769, a device that regulated steam flow to a steam engine to maintain constant engine speed despite a changing load. The first theoretical analysis of a control system, which presented a differential-equation model of the Watt governor, was published by James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish physicist, in the 19th century. Maxwell’s work wa