Feedback control techniques - a PID design handbook

The authors’ intention is to promote an understanding of control loops, particularly PID (Proportional, Integral and Differential) based control loops, not just the design tools. A control loop consists of a controller, a system to control and feedback from a measured output back to the controller. The system could be controllable using, e.g. a valve or a motor voltage, and the output measurement could be, e.g. a temperature or a velocity.

The controller is then to ensure that the output reaches the desired value. The book covers Laplace, transfer functions, modelling, controller design based on frequency analysis and handling of stability, limited systems and disturbances. This textbook is intended for a course in PID-type control design for engineering students at the university level.

The chapters are intended to be self-contained, i.e. limiting the reference to earlier chapters, to allow chapters to be skipped if competencies covered by these chapters are obtained elsewhere. The independent chapters allow the book to be used for self-study and as a handbook. In one of the last chapters, z-transform is introduced briefly to allow the frequency domain controller design to be digitally implemented.