UNIT 4

STABILITY ANALYSIS
TOPICS
 Concepts of stability
 Necessary conditions for stability
 Routh Stability Criterion
 Relative stability analysis
 More on Routh Stability Criterion
 The Concept of Stability
The concept of stability can be
illustrated by a cone placed on
a plane horizontal surface.

A necessary and
sufficient condition for a
feedback system to be
stable is that all the
poles of the system
transfer function have
negative real parts.

A system is considered marginally stable if only certain bounded

inputs will result in a bounded output.
 STABLE SYSTEM
 Response or output is predictable.
 A system is said to be stable if for a bounded
disturbing input signal, the output vanishes
ultimately as t infinity.
 A system is unstable if for a bounded disturbing
input signal the output is of infinite amplitude or
oscillatory.
i) For a bounded i/p, it produces unbounded o/p.

ii) In the absence of i/p, o/p may not return to zero.

It shows certain o/p without i/p.
STABLE SYSTEM
UNSTABLE SYSTEM
UNCONTROLLABLE RESPONSE
 DEFINITIONS OF STABILITY
 Bounded Input, Bounded Output (BIBO)
Stability:
A system is said to be BIBO Stable if
i) For Bounded i/p, we have Bounded o/p; o/p
– Controllable.
ii) In the absence of i/p, o/p must tend to zero
irrespective of initial conditions.
Relaxed system: A System in which initial
conditions are zero.
 DEFINITIONS OF STABILITY
 Critically
or Marginally Stable system:
for a bounded i/p, o/p oscillates with constant
frequency and amplitude. Such oscillations are
called Damped or sustained oscillations.

Conditionally Stable system:

o/p is bounded only for certain condition. If this
condition is violated, o/p is unbounded. Stability
depends on condition of parameter of the system.
CRITICALLY OR MARGINALLY STABLE
SYSTEM
 DEFINITIONS OF STABILITY
 Zero input stability:
If the zero input response of the system subjected to finite
initial conditions, reaches to zero as tinfinity, then the
system is zero input stable.

Asymptotic Stability:
As magnitude of zero input response reaches zero as t
approaches infinity, then zero input stability is also
called asymptotic stability.
If in the absence of i/p, the o/p tends to zero or to the
equilibrium state irrespective of initial conditions.
 DEFINITIONS OF STABILITY
 Absolutely Stable system:
If the system o/p is stable for all variations
of its parameters then the system is called
absolutely stable system.
 TRANSFER FUNCTION

 When order of the denominator polynomial is greater than

the numerator polynomial the transfer function is said to
be ‘proper’.

 Otherwise ‘improper’

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 STABILITY OF CONTROL SYSTEM

 Roots of denominator polynomial of a transfer function are

called ‘poles’.

 And the roots of numerator polynomials of a transfer function

are called ‘zeros’.

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 STABILITY OF CONTROL SYSTEM

 Poles of the system are represented by ‘x’ and zeros of the

system are represented by ‘o’.
 System order is always equal to number of poles of the transfer
function.
 Following transfer function represents nth order plant.

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 STABILITY OF CONTROL SYSTEM

 Poles is also defined as “it is the frequency at which

system becomes infinite”. Hence the name pole where
field is infinite.

 And zero is the frequency at which system becomes 0.

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 STABILITY OF CONTROL SYSTEM
 Poles is also defined as “it is the frequency at which
system becomes infinite”.
 Like a magnetic pole or black hole.

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 STABILITY OF CONTROL SYSTEMS

 The poles and zeros of the system are plotted in s-

plane to check the stability of the system.
j

LHP RHP

Recall s    j


s-plane

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 STABILITY OF CONTROL SYSTEMS
 If all the poles of the system lie in left half plane the
system is said to be Stable.
 If any of the poles lie in right half plane the system
is said to be unstable.
 If pole(s) lie on imaginary axis the system is said to
be marginally stable.
j

LHP RHP

If all the poles 

s-plane
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 STABILITY OF CONTROL SYSTEMS
 For example
C
G( s )  , if A  1, B  3 and C  10
As  B
 Then the only pole of the system lie at

pole  3
j

LHP RHP

X 
-3

s-plane
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LOCATION OF ROOTS ON S PLANE
LOCATION OF ROOTS ON S PLANE
LOCATION OF ROOTS ON S PLANE
LOCATION OF ROOTS ON S PLANE
CONCLUSIONS BASED ON THE LOCATION OF
ROOTS OF CHARACTERISTIC EQUATION
 Roots-LHS – negative real parts – Response –Bounded-
BIBO Stable.
 Roots-RHS – Positive real parts –Response –
Unbounded- Unstable.
 Repeated roots on Imaginary axis –Response –
Unbounded- unstable.
 Single root at origin – Bounded –Unstable.

 Repeated roots at origin –Unbounded, unstable.

 Non repeated roots on imaginary axis or single pole at

origin- Limitedly or marginally stable system.
 OBSERVATIONS
 All the co efficients –Positive => roots –
LHS
 If any co efficient is zero=> roots-
Imaginary axis or RHS
 If any co efficient is negative => atleast
one root -RHS
 NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR
STABILITY
 All the co efficients of a characteristic polynomial
be positive.
 If any co efficient is zero or negative, we can
immediately say that the system is unstable.

But not sufficient condition

s3+ s2+2s+8 = (s+2) (s- 0.5 – 1.93j) (s-0.5+1.93j)
Co efficients –positive but roots –RHS
So s/m – Unstable.
 ROUTH HURWITZ CRITERION
 Sufficient conditions for stability.
 Hurwitz – investigated stability interms of determinants.

 Routh – in terms of array formulation.

 Routh Stability criterion:

The necessary and sufficient condition for stability is that

all the elements in the first column of the routh array
must be positive. If this condition is not met, the system is
unstable and the no of sign changes in the elements of the
first column of the routh array corresponds to the no of
roots of characteristic equation in RHS of s plane.