Stability & Root Locus

Stability
• The stability of a system depends on the locations of the poles and zeros
within the system.

• A continuous system is stable if all poles are on the left half of the complex
plane.

• A discrete system is stable if all poles are within a unit circle centered at
the origin of the complex plane.

• Additionally, both types of systems are stable if they do not contain any
poles.

• Additionally, both types of systems are unstable if they contain more than
one pole at the origin.
 Stability
• In terms of the dynamic response, a pole is stable if
the response of the pole decays over time.

• If the response becomes larger over time, the pole is

unstable.

• If the response remains unchanged over time, the

pole is marginally stable.

• To describe a system as stable, all the closed-loop

poles of a system must be stable.
 Stability
• Use the CD Pole-Zero Map VI to obtain all the
poles and zeros of a system and plot their
corresponding locations in the complex plane.

• Use the CD Stability VI to determine if a

system is stable, unstable, or marginally stable.
 Using the Root Locus Method
• The root locus method provides the closed-loop pole
positions for all possible changes in the loop gain K.

• Root locus plots provide an important indication of

what gain ranges you can use to keep the closed-loop
system stable.

• The root locus is a plot on the real-imaginary axis

showing the values of s that correspond to pole
locations for all gains, starting at the open-loop poles,
K = 0 and ending at K = ∞.
 Using the Root Locus Method

• Use the CD Root Locus VI to compute and

draw root locus plots for continuous and
discrete SISO models of any form.

• You also can use this VI to synthesize a

controller.
Root Locus Method Example 1
Root Locus Method Example 1