22-Elec-B2 Advanced Control Systems: Undated paper

Paper format. 16-Elec-B2 Advanced Control Systems, undated sitting (the running head reads “16-Elec-B2 Advanced Control Systems — May 2019”) — a three-hour open-book examination, any non-communicating calculator permitted. The cover page states “Any four questions constitute a complete paper. Only the first four questions as they appear in your answer paper will be marked”. The paper prints five questions of 25 marks each, so a candidate answers four for 100 marks. Questions 1 and 2 are each a multiple-choice block — fifteen items in Question 1 and eighteen in Question 2 — whose per-item weights are printed in square brackets and total exactly 25 in both cases. A table of inverse Laplace transforms and a table of Laplace and z-transforms are appended. The preamble that governs the whole paper reads: “In the following questions, it is assumed that the control systems are negative feedback with \(K>0\), unless specified otherwise.” All five questions are worked below, because this set is a study resource rather than a timed sitting.

Reference texts. N. S. Nise, Control Systems Engineering, 8th ed. (Ch. 2 modelling and gear trains, Ch. 4 time response and the settling-time relations, Ch. 5 block-diagram and signal-flow-graph reduction with Mason’s rule, Ch. 6 Routh–Hurwitz stability, Ch. 7 steady-state error and system type, Ch. 8 root-locus sketching rules including the zero-degree locus for \(K<0\), Ch. 9 root-locus design of cascade compensators, Ch. 10 frequency response and stability margins); R. C. Dorf and R. H. Bishop, Modern Control Systems, 13th ed. (Ch. 2, 5, 6, 7, 9 — the driver–train case study of Question 5 follows Dorf’s treatment of human-operator models); K. Ogata, Modern Control Engineering, 5th ed. (Ch. 5 transient response, Ch. 6 root-locus design, Ch. 7 frequency-response design); G. F. Franklin, J. D. Powell and A. Emami-Naeini, Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems, 8th ed. (Ch. 3, 5, 6). These are the references listed for exam code 16-Elec-B2 in the Engineers Canada syllabus, and this paper’s vocabulary (“centroid”, “breakaway point”, “summation of the angles”, “settling time for 2%”) follows Nise closely.