Introduction

In recent years, the subject of control has become an integral part of almost every
technical and scientific course of study and in particular of all branches of
engineering. The applications of control systems cover a very wide scope, ranging
from the design of simple appliances used in kitchen to the study of physiology of
the human body.
Control engineering, is then, primarily concerned with understanding and
controlling natural resources and forces of nature purposefully and for the benefit
of man. It is concerned with the design and development of machines and
equipment by which man can utilize power.
Early machines and equipment used for control were primarily manually operated
and required frequent adjustments and resets in performance.
Open loop and closed loop systems
The operation of a system may be controlled externally (by an operator) or
automatically (by system itself). When the control action of the system is
independent of the system output, the system is said to be open loop controlled
system. However, if the control action is somehow dependent on the output, the
system is called closed loop or feedback control system.
The following is the block diagram of an open loop system.

Desired SYSTEM
Output
input

The following is the block diagram of a closed loop system.

Comparator

+ SYSTEM
Desired Output
input
-

Feedback

An example of an action of an open loop control system is a car wash machine in

which all the cars receive the same amount of washing irrespective of how dirty
they are. Here, the output is the cleanliness of the cars, which corresponds to a
given setting of the machine (amount of water and washing time).
A human being however, who washes cars, automatically makes sure that the
dirtier cars receive more attention than the others. He is therefore a closed loop
control system.
The lighting of a room is an open loop system. Once the light is turned ON, it will
remain ON irrespective of whether the room is dark or light.
A refrigerator is a closed loop system. Its temperature is measured by a thermostat
which turns the motor ON when the temperature rises above the desired value and
turns it OFF when it reaches the desired value.
The features of the open loop and closed loop systems are summarized as follows:
Open loop
 They are simple
 Their accuracy is determined by the calibration of their elements
 They are not generally troubled by instability.
Closed loop
 Thy are highly accurate
 They are more complex
 Non-linearity and distortions are greatly reduced.
 They have wide bandwidth
 They suffer from instability problems.
Transfer function
The transfer function of a time invariant system is defined to be the ratio of Laplace
transform of the output variable to the Laplace transform of the input variable,
under assumptions that all initial conditions are zero.
It relates the output of the system to its input, and hence describes the behavior of
that system.

Input
Output
G
 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑝𝑢𝑡 = 𝐺 × 𝑖𝑛𝑝𝑢𝑡
𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝐺 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑓𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑦𝑡𝑒𝑚.
Canonical form of the closed loop system
The simplest form of a closed loop system is shown in the following diagram in
which the forward element has transfer function 𝐺 and the feedback element has
a transfer function 𝐻.

E
+
R G C
±

B H

Complicated systems may be reduced to this canonical form from which the
following definitions are made:
Open loop transfer function = 𝐺 × 𝐻 = 𝐺𝐻
𝐶
Closed loop transfer function (control ratio) =
𝑅
𝐸
Error ratio =
𝑅
𝐵
Primary feedback ratio =
𝑅

A system in which 𝐻 = 1 is called a unity feedback system.

A closed loop may employ a positive feedback or negative feedback. If the signal
fed back from the output of the system is added to the input signal, the system is
said to be using positive feedback.
If however the output of the system is subtracted from the input signal, the system
is said to be using negative feedback.
Negative feedback

+ E
R G C
−

B H
 𝐶
Transfer function :
𝑅

𝐶 =𝐸×𝐺 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝐸 = 𝑅 − 𝐵
𝐶 = (𝑅 − 𝐵)𝐺 = 𝐺𝑅 − 𝐺𝐵 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝐵 = 𝐶𝐻
𝐶 = 𝐺𝑅 − 𝐺𝐻𝐶
𝐶 + 𝐺𝐻𝐶 = 𝐺𝑅
(1 + 𝐺𝐻)𝐶 = 𝐺𝑅
𝐶 𝐺
=
𝑅 1 + 𝐺𝐻
𝐸
Error ratio :
𝑅

𝐸 =𝑅−𝐵
𝐸 = 𝑅 − 𝐶𝐻 𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝐶 = 𝐸𝐺
𝐸 = 𝑅 − 𝐺𝐻𝐸
𝐸 + 𝐺𝐻𝐸 = 𝑅
(1 + 𝐺𝐻)𝐸 = 𝑅
𝐸 1
=
𝑅 1 + 𝐺𝐻
𝐵
Primary feedback ratio :
𝑅

𝐵 = 𝐶𝐻
𝐵 = 𝐸𝐺𝐻
𝐵 = (𝑅 − 𝐵)𝐺𝐻
𝐵 = 𝐺𝐻𝑅 − 𝐺𝐻𝐵
𝐵 + 𝐺𝐻𝐵 = 𝐺𝐻𝑅
𝐵(1 + 𝐺𝐻) = 𝐺𝐻𝑅
𝐵 𝐺𝐻
=
𝑅 1 + 𝐺𝐻