Page 17 - Modern Control Systems

Preface xiii
THE AUDIENCE

This text is designed for an introductory undergraduate course in control systems for
engineering students. There is very little demarcation between aerospace, chemical,
electrical, industrial, and mechanical engineering in control system practice; there-
fore, this text is written without any conscious bias toward one discipline. Thus, it is
hoped that this book will be equally useful for all engineering disciplines and, per-
haps, will assist in illustrating the utility of control engineering. The numerous prob-
lems and examples represent all fields, and the examples of the sociological,
biological, ecological, and economic control systems are intended to provide the
reader with an awareness of the general applicability of control theory to many
facets of life. We believe that exposing students of one discipline to examples and
problems from other disciplines will provide them with the ability to see beyond
their own field of study. Many students pursue careers in engineering fields other
than their own. For example, many electrical and mechanical engineers find them-
selves in the aerospace industry working alongside aerospace engineers. We hope this
introduction to control engineering will give students a broader understanding of
control system design and analysis.
In its first eleven editions, Modern Control Systems has been used in senior-level
courses for engineering students at more than 400 colleges and universities. It also
has been used in courses for engineering graduate students with no previous back-
ground in control engineering.

THE TWELFTH EDITION

A companion website is available to students and faculty using the twelfth edition.
The website contains all the m-files in the book, Laplace and z-transform tables,
written materials on matrix algebra and complex numbers, symbols, units, and con-
version factors, and an introduction to the LabVIEW MathScript RT Module.
An icon will appear in the book margin whenever there is additional related mate-
rial on the website. The companion website also includes video solutions of repre-
sentative homework problems and a complete Pearson eText. The MCS website
address is www.pearsonhighered.com/dorf.
With the twelfth edition, we continue to evolve the design emphasis that his-
torically has characterized Modern Control Systems. Using the real-world engi-
neering problems associated with designing a controller for a disk drive read
system, we present the Sequential Design Example (identified by an arrow icon in
the text), which is considered sequentially in each chapter using the methods and
concepts in that chapter. Disk drives are used in computers of all sizes and they
represent an important application of control engineering. Various aspects of the
design of controllers for the disk drive read system are considered in each chapter.
For example, in Chapter 1 we identify the control goals, identify the variables to
be controlled, write the control specifications, and establish the preliminary sys-
tem configuration for the disk drive. Then, in Chapter 2, we obtain models of the